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Ep 651 Part 2: Praising Ruto's Talanta Stadium | Kenya's Debt Crisis | BAD ROADS, ACCENT POWER!
John Waters returns to Hearts of Oak to discuss the fuel protests in Ireland involving farmers, hauliers, and building contractors. He examines the economic pressures on these groups, government policy responses, media coverage, and the wider context of national identity and sovereignty. John considers the protests as a potential basis for greater public unity and the emergence of new leadership. John Waters is an Irish writer and thinker, exploring themes from society's spirit to rock ‘n' roll, the human self, and modern life's meaning. Starting as a journalist with Hot Press in 1981, he went full-time in 1984, moving to Dublin. He tackled controversial issues like colonialism's impact and fathers' rights, writing for The Irish Times for 24 years until 2014. His articles now appear in First Things, The Spectator, and others. He's published ten books, including Give Us Back the Bad Roads (2018), reflecting on Ireland's cultural decline. A playwright, songwriter, husband, father, and lapsed agnostic, he was born in Roscommon, belongs to Sligo, and lives in Dublin. Connect with John... X https://x.com/johnwaters2024 @johnwaters2024 SUBSTACK https://johnwaters.substack.com/ WEBSITE https://www.johnwaters.ie/ Connect with Hearts of Oak…
No. 5 Iowa State hosts No. 9 Kansas on Saturday. The Cyclones are coming off a bad performance at TCU and hoping to a avoid a season sweep to the Jayhawks. Iowa suffers its first head-scratching loss of the McCollum era at Maryland. The Hawkeyes look to bounce back as they welcome Purdue on Saturday. The Big 12 makes an announcement about a new court for the men's and women's tournament in Kansas City. Plus, the guys are back with stories from a few days together in Florida. Presented by Fareway Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Have the markings on Irish roads gotten too bad?Apparently people are failing driving tests because of faded white lines and stop signs.Is this something you've noticed?Joining Andrea to discuss is Clodagh Branagan, Director of Ladybird Driving School, Driving Instructor Brendan Tierney and listeners.
Hosts Brody Henderson, Janis Putelis, and Maggie Hudlow recap some recent fall hunts, chat with Tim Fullman and Matt Jackson of the Wilderness Society about the impacts of an Ambler Road, have a crew-submitted Hot Tip Off, and get another round of Rut Reports from the field. Watch the live stream on the MeatEater Podcast Network YouTube channel. Subscribe to The MeatEater Podcast Network MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Welcome to the San Antoniooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo FanCast Soccer Roundtable Agenda Topics:Sunday Night RecapSAFC Fancast Recap:San Antonio 1Detroit City FC 1FWD Kyle Linhares from Timbers 2 with Patino; Crognale Surgery SA Soccer Roundtable/SAFC Fancast
Stay on top of the latest trends and best practices in economic development. Chad Chancellor, CEO of Next Move Group conducts fast-paced interviews with top players in the economic development field.
This week, we hit the road with Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Road Trip—the Disney+ sequel that takes the chaos from home to highway. We break down the new cast, the sibling dynamics, and find out if this trip is worth taking.Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GMWKSLeave us a voice message by going to https://anchor.fm/moonstreetQuestions or Comments?Email us at grownmenwks@gmail.comInstagram: @grown-men-watch-kid-shitFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/GMWKS/
* Is more tropical activity in the Pacific good news for us? * Does crime really go up in the summer? * Why are our streets so bad in Louisiana? * Is the New Orleans-area one of the worst real estate markets in the nation? * Breaking down a big Pelicans trade and whom they could draft * There'll be horse racing at the Fair Grounds this season
Episode 2647: Vinnie Tortorich and Chris Shaffer discuss traveling, going down a bad road with GLP-1s and muscle loss, and more. https:vinnietortorich.com/2025/05/going-down-a-bad-road-episode-2647 PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS YOU CAN WATCH ALL THE PODCAST EPISODES ON YOUTUBE - Going Down A Bad Road Vinnie is traveling soon and is looking forward to going back home for crawfish season. (2:30) A good road trip is a nice “mental massage.” (5:15) He shares what he packs for the road trip. All of Vinnie's businesses will be consolidated into one website soon. (16:00) Pure Vitamin Club, Pure Coffee Club, and NSNG Foods will be available on one website. Chris brings up Good Morning America and GLP-1s. (18:00) Zepbound is being touted as the most effective, but, of course, it will come at a cost. The drastic loss of muscle is a concern; after all, your heart is a muscle! Ten percent (the low-end percentage) of muscle loss in the 60 to 72 week time span is the same as 20 yearsof sarcopenia. (25:00) They give an example of a VIP member who has been slow to lose weight; however, they have figured out this person is undereating! Your metabolism can slow down if you aren't getting enough calories. It can be as simple as adding another egg or two to make sure you are getting enough. This is the challenge with intermittent fasting and OMAD (one meal a day) approaches to eating. If you allow yourself to eat a treat, just get right back on the NSNG® plan. If you aren't sure how to get started with NSNG®, get Vinnie's e-book. Chris shares some of his weight loss journey. (42:00) He discovered his wheat and gluten sensitivity after stopping eating certain foods like pizza and pasta. Now he is so well-tuned with his health, he can tell if even a small amount of wheat is in his food. Avoid processed foods; they are addictive and damaging to your health. More News If you are interested in the NSNG® VIP group is currently closed for registration, but you can get on the wait list - Don't forget to check out Serena Scott Thomas on Days of Our Lives on the Peacock channel. “Dirty Keto” is available on Amazon! You can purchase or rent it . Make sure you watch, rate, and review it! Eat Happy Italian, Anna's next cookbook, is available! You can go to You can order it from . Anna's recipes are in her cookbooks, website, and Substack–they will spice up your day! Don't forget you can invest in Anna's Eat Happy Kitchen through StartEngine. Details are at Eat Happy Kitchen. There's a new NSNG® Foods promo code you can use! The promo code ONLY works on the NSNG® Foods website, NOT on Amazon. https://nsngfoods.com/ PURCHASE DIRTY KETO (2024) The documentary launched in August 2024! Order it TODAY! This is Vinnie's fourth documentary in just over five years. Visit my new Documentaries HQ to find my films everywhere: Then, please share my fact-based, health-focused documentary series with your friends and family. Additionally, the more views, the better it ranks, so please watch it again with a new friend! REVIEWS: Please submit your REVIEW after you watch my films. Your positive REVIEW does matter! PURCHASE BEYOND IMPOSSIBLE (2022) Visit my new Documentaries HQ to find my films everywhere: REVIEWS: Please submit your REVIEW after you watch my films. Your positive REVIEW does matter! FAT: A DOCUMENTARY 2 (2021) Visit my new Documentaries HQ to find my films everywhere: FAT: A DOCUMENTARY (2019) Visit my new Documentaries HQ to find my films everywhere:
A rock shattered Sue's windshield on Rte 1 in Saugus, this morning. We are calling this segment: What's the WICKED BAD ROAD you drive every morning.....
- SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PODCAST: http://cornerofthegalaxy.com/subscribe/ - COG LA GALAXY DISCORD: https://discord.gg/drr9HFZY2P - COG ANTHEM MUSIC BY RAY PLAZA: https://linktr.ee/munditoplaza - COG ANTHEM MUSIC DOWNLOAD: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3asiasldwKyoCRm1Vzx2h7?si=_LmXI9otT9y9j0ChMGMt2w COG STUDIOS, Calif. -- The only cure, it seems, for a winless streak that stretches months is a little road trip. And when we say "a little," we mean a BIG ROAD TRIP! On today's show, hosts Josh guesman and Eric Vieira discuss the LA Galaxy's winless streak, things that need to change to see this team climb the standings, and what a game against Sporting KC means for both sides. The guys dive into the prominent role that Marco Reus will need to have in this game, and Sporting and the Galaxy are scraping the bottom of the Western Conference to find a win. If the Galaxy get going, can they suddenly rattle off some wins? Or is the season on life support? Can Greg Vanney survive the road trip without any wins? And what solutions he could find while traveling on the road. We've got a packed show that will prepare you for Sunday's match with SKC and give you some insight into what the Galaxy need to have happen on their big adventure! -- Corner of the Galaxy is kicking off Season 17, just a few shows past show no. 1,100! And we can't wait to show you everything we've got in store for 2025! This is just a reminder that we go live twice a week — Monday and Thursday at 8 PM on YouTube—and that you can find us conveniently anywhere you get your podcasts (Apple, Spotify, Soundcloud, YouTube, GooglePlay, etc.). We're making it easy for you to stay connected! So tell a friend that you've been listening to the longest-running team-specific podcast in Major League Soccer and that 2025 is a great time to start listening!
Traffic chaos - again - is it the roads - or is it bad driving.. Tenant in Situ - an idea that clearly works - so why shut it down..Living my dreams - you only have one life, says footballer Charlie & lots more Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Josh Vernier joined The Drive to discussing the Royals offensive woes and their 2-8 road trip.
We don't have to go any further than our couch to catch the new movies this weekend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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FLORIDA IS NOT THE PLACE TO BE DUE TO HIGH PRICES, HIGH TAXES, HIGH FEES, WEATHER, SNAKES, CROWDING, BAD ROADS, FUCKED UP LEGISLATURE, AND SO MUCH MORE....LISTEN IN AND LEARN BEFORE YOU MAKE THE MISTAKE OF A LIFETIME.
Recorded on a Monday night at the Blue. Glen McNary needs to control the weather and wildfires better! Junior bitches out on us and sends us directly to voice mail. Mike Honcho is back! He tells us what he has been up to lately and the tires on his truck are bald and his junk stinks. He cooks good stuff, like sketti.
The Jay Thomas Show from Monday November 25th, 2024. Guests are your calls and emails.
Becky is a Scottish theatre director, facilitator and writer. She trained at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and was a finalist for the prestigious JMK Award in 2019 and 2021. Her work spans Musical Theatre, Shakespeare, new writing and reworked classics in various forms and capacities. She also works across a variety of educational institutions and engagement departments across Scotland. Directing credits include: Woman Walking (Sylvian Productions/Perth Theatre); God Catcher (Petrichor Productions); The Steamie (Dundee Rep); Seven Against Edinburgh (Lyceum Theatre); Bloodbank, He Who Opens the Door, Not Now, Absolute Bowlocks, Celestial Body, The Cameo (Play, Pie, Pint/Lemon Tree/Traverse Theatre); Glory on Earth, Little Women - The Musical, Faustus: That Damned Woman, 9 to 5 The Musical, The Pajama Game, Bad Roads, Much Ado About Nothing, Enron, Blue Stockings (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland); The Comedy of Errors (Petersfield Shakespeare Company); The Fairy that Fell off the Christmas Tree (She Productions); Bombshells, It's Different for Girls (She Productions/East Riding Theatre); Macbeth (Summer on Stage/Lyceum Theatre); It Never Ends (Traverse Theatre/Cumbernauld Theatre); Buffer, Riot Squat (Thrive Theatre); The Hen Night, Like a Moth to a Flame (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland). Becky worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company for two years as an assistant director on Romeo and Juliet and The Hypocrite. At the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh she has been commissioned as a writer, worked as a director and facilitator and was resident Assistant Director for the 2014/15 season. Robin Hiley is the Artistic Director/CEO @ Charades Theatre Company SCIO, Composer/songwriter, Composer/Lyricist of musical LIFELINE (formerly The Mould that Changed the World), Music producer, Theatre producer (2x sell-out EdFringe runs) Lifeline tells the story of Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming's world-changing discovery of penicillin in 1928, charting the rise and fall of antibiotics. Fleming's historic story is interwoven with Jess', a present day doctor whose childhood sweetheart, Aaron, is recovering from cancer treatment, almost 100 years after antibiotics were discovered. But just as Aaron is desperate to resume normality and rekindle the romance, his life hangs in the balance, as he waits to see if Fleming's miracle cure will still work well enough to save him.
Hormones can lead you down bad roads and staying in a bad relationship too long • some men hate women • get ready to become a caregiver ⚕️• follow Tranquil Minimalist on TikTok and YouTube
Paramount Chiefs of Kenyasi No1, Kenyasi No2, and Hwidiem in the Ahafo Region say they will support the youth to stage an unprecedented protest against the government if the Kenyasi-Hwidiem deplorable road is not fixed immediately
Gio's been listening to WFAN and some hosts and fans want Aaron Boone fired mid season. Boomer talked about the Mets winning 2, losing 3. Boomer is not blaming Carlos Mendoza for making a bad pitching change with Christian Scott. The Mets are not going to the playoffs, so they're protecting a young pitcher. They just don't have the bullpen for it. C-Lo is in for Jerry and starts with the Mets bullpen once again blowing a game. The Mets ended the road trip 4-4. Keith Hernandez doesn't like ‘LFGM' and thinks the ‘F' is ‘grotesque'. Jazz Chisolm may be on the trading block for the Marlins. In the final segment of the hour, traffic reporter Karen Stewart checks in to give her top five worst roads in the area.
Traffic maven Karen Stewart knows her stuff and you better listen.
Ben, Woods, and Paul are here for you on a Thursday! We start the show with a little foreplay as we reflect on an AMAZING day yesterday at Goat Hill for The 3rd Annual-Ish Chrome Tour Ben & Woods Open! Then we pay off The Incorporator from Tuesday evening's broadcast before we set the menu and get to our Padres Wrap-Up as we discuss yesterday's 5-2 win over the Phillies as the Padres ended a really rough road trip with a win! Listen here!
Welcome to Passion Daily. Here, our prayer is that you will spend a few minutes focusing on the Scriptures every Monday through Friday, with specific encouragement from our team. —Passion Equip exists to see people around the globe know and draw closer to Jesus. Over 20 years of ministry, we've developed resources on almost every passage in the Bible. Explore our latest resources at https://passionequip.com—Give towards what God is doing through Passion City Church: https://passioncitychurch.com/give-online—With Passion City Online, you can join us every Sunday live at 9:30a and 11:45a, and our gatherings are available on-demand starting at 2p! Join us at https://passioncitychurch.com—At Passion City Church, we believe that because God has displayed the ultimate sacrifice in Jesus, our response to that in worship must be extravagant. It is our privilege, and our created purpose, to reflect God's Glory to Him through our praise, our sacrifice, and our song.—Follow Passion Equip: https://www.instagram.com/passionequip/Follow Passion Conferences: https://www.instagram.com/passion268Follow Passion City Church: https://www.instagram.com/passioncity/
It's been a while since we went free form so today's show takes our regular breather from genre-focused explorations, theme, retrospectives and artist-inspired shows. There will be all of that found in the mix this morning. Interspersed between some fresh sounds from the likes of Dylan LeBlanc, Charley Crockett, and a newly revealed Johnny Cash nugget, we'll be sharing everything from Dave Brubeck to Los Indios Tabajaras, Marvin Rainwater, and Johnny Thunder in our show today. From a pair of Memphis Minnie covers, some country classics from Patsy Cline, swinging rhythm from Louis Jordan, and straight-ahead rock from The Doobie Brothers and The Georgia Satellites…it's a Friday morning full of Duane Eddy tributes and we've even got Slim Whitman…just for you on Sonoma County Community Radio, broadcasting on the FM airwaves out of Occidental, California, and streaming to the whole wide world on kowsfm.com/listen. KOWS-LP 92.5 FM is “Free Speech. No Bull” Community Radio.
Last week the Irish people delivered a blow to the corrupt Irish government. They voted an overwhelming No to a referendum that would have redefined family and women. The proposed referenda altering the nation's constitution enjoyed the support of Ireland's elites, but the attempt to embed woke values in it has backfired. The Government asked voters to remove the word 'mother' from the Constitution and they answered with a resounding No. They also rejected by a huge margin the attempt to foist the extremely nebulous term "durable relationships" on the Constitution. The government worked in conjunction with every political party and legacy media outlet to tell and coerce the people into accepting these changes. The people refused. John Waters returns to Hearts of Oak to analyse why this referendum was proposed and what the rejection means, not only for the government but for the people of Ireland. John Waters is an Irish Thinker, Talker, and Writer. From the life of the spirit of society to the infinite reach of rock ‘n' roll; from the puzzle of the human ‘I' to the true nature of money; from the attempted murder of fatherhood to the slow death of the novel, he speaks and writes about the meaning of life in the modern world. He began part-time work as a journalist in 1981, with Hot Press, Ireland's leading rock ‘n' roll magazine and went full-time in 1984, when he moved from the Wild West to the capital, Dublin. As a journalist, magazine editor and columnist, he specialised from the start in raising unpopular issues of public importance, including the psychic cost of colonialism and the denial of rights to fathers under what is called family 'law'. He was a columnist with The Irish Times for 24 years when being Ireland's premier newspaper still meant something. He left in 2014 when this had come to mean diddly-squat, and drew the blinds fully on Irish journalism a year later. Since then, his articles have appeared in publications such as First Things, frontpagemag.com, The Spectator, and The Spectator USA. He has published ten books, the latest, Give Us Back the Bad Roads (2018), being a reflection on the cultural disintegration of Ireland since 1990, in the form of a letter to his late father. Connect with John... SUBSTACK johnwaters.substack.com/ WEBSITE: anti-corruptionireland.com/ Recorded 18.3.24 Connect with Hearts of Oak... WEBSITE heartsofoak.org/ PODCASTS heartsofoak.podbean.com/ SOCIAL MEDIA heartsofoak.org/connect/ *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on X https://twitter.com/TheBoschFawstin?s=20 TRANSCRIPT (Hearts of Oak) And it's wonderful to have John Waters join us once again from Ireland. John, thanks so much for your time today. (John Waters) Thank you, Peter. Pleasure to be with you. Great to have you on. It was ages ago, goodness, talking about immigration. That was a good 18 months ago. Always good to have you on. And people can follow you, on your Substack, johnwaters.substack.com. That's where they can get all your writings. You've got one of your latest ones, I think, Beware the Ides of March, part one. Do you just want to mention that to give people a flavour of what they can find on your Substack? Yeah, it's a short series. I don't know. I think it's going to be probably two, maybe three articles. I have several other things that are kind of related to it. It's really the story of what happened, what has been happening since four years ago really, as opposed to what they told us, what happened, what we've been talking about. It's essentially, this was not about your health. It was about your wealth, and that's the message so I go through that in terms of its meanings. And in the first part which has just gone up last night; it's really about the the way that the the predator class the richest of the rich in the world are essentially. Coming to the end of their three-card trick which has been around now for 50 years. Which is the money systems that emerge after the untethering of currencies from the gold standard. And that's essentially been a balloon that's been expanding, expanding, expanding, and it's about to blow. They're trying to control that explosion. But essentially, their mission is to ensure that, not a drop of their wealth is spilt in whatever happens, right? And that everybody else will lose everything, pretty much. They don't care about that. In fact, that's part of their wish. And so it's that really what I'm kind of talking about and how that started. We now know that the beginnings of what is called COVID were nothing to do with a virus. There was a bulletin issued by Black Rock on the 15th of August 2019, Assumption Day in the Christian calendar, which is the day that the body of our Blessed Virgin was assumed and received into heaven. But, the word assumption has lots of other meanings. I think there was a lot of that at play on that particular day when they were assuming the right to dictate to the world what its future should be. That was really the start of it. And then the COVID lockdowns and all of that flowed inexorably. There's a lot of stuff we could go into, but we won't. I don't think about vaccines and all the rest of it. They're part of that story. But the central part was that this was completely fabricated and completely engineered and it was a fundamental attack on human freedom in the west particularly. And has been largely successful so far but, now as I think we're going to talk about it, in Ireland there's beginning to be that little bit of a pushback. I'm hopeful now. Well, obviously I've really enjoyed your your writings on Substack. I don't have the patience for the writing, but you are a writer a journalist and that is your bread and butter. People obviously can support you financially on Substack if they want to do that after reading your writings. Let's go into Ireland: we saw this referendum and it's interesting. We'll get into some of the comments on it, but really there were two parts of this referendum and it was focusing on family and the woman's position or the mother's position. Do you want to just let us know how this referendum came about? OK, well, first of all, you've got to see it in its context, which is in a series of attacks on the Irish Constitution going back. Going back, you could say 30 years. It depends in the context of the European Union and the various referendums that we had about that, the Nice Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty, in which the Irish people were basically told when they voted ‘no', that's the wrong answer. You're going to have to think again, and you're going to have to vote again. And they did, and it passed, because they were just bullied into doing it. In the past decade or so, a dozen years, we've had three critical referendums which attacked, the Irish Constitution which has a series of fundamental rights articles right in the centre of it, articles 40 to 44. That's been informally called by judges over the years: the Irish Bill of Rights, which is all the personal fundamental rights, all the rights that derive essentially from natural law in the greater number of them. That, in other words, they're inalienable, imprescriptible, they are antecedent. They're not generated by the Constitution or indeed by the people. Certainly not by the government or anybody else. So, now there was an attack on Article 41 in 2012, which was purportedly to put in children's rights into the Constitution. That was completely bogus because it was a successful attempt attempt to transfer parental rights to the state. That's what it was when you look closely at it. And I was fighting all these referendums. Then in 2015, we had the so-called gay marriage or the marriage referendum. Which essentially, people don't really get this; they talk about Ireland having legalised gay marriage. No, no, we didn't. That's not what we did. We actually destroyed marriage by putting gay marriage as an equivalent concept in our constitution. And then there was the infamous Eighth Amendment referendum in 2018, which was to take out an amendment which had been put in some 40 years before, 30 years before, in 1983, to guarantee, to, as it were, copper fasten the right to life of the unborn child. And there's a very subtle point that needs to be made about this, not very subtle really, but legally it is, which is that this was an unlawful referendum because this was one of those inalienable, imprescriptible rights. Even though the article in which it was couched on was only introduced in 1983, and all it was, was a kind of a reminder, that these rights exist, because these rights already exist as unenumerated rights. And as a result of that the referendum was actually unlawful and should never have taken place, because the Irish people had no right to vote down the rights of a section of its own population. Which was the unborn children waiting to emerge into the world to live their lives in peace and whatever would come their way in that life. But nevertheless, to have a law, to have essentially an illegal, unlawful law, quote unquote, created that prevented them from even entering this world. It seemed to me to be the greatest abomination that has ever happened in our country. So, this was a continuation of this. There are different theories about what it was about. There were two amendments, as you said, Peter. The second one that you mentioned was the mother in the home. And this was a guarantee to women, to mothers, that they would be protected from having to go out, if they wished, to go out into the workplace and work. And if they wanted to mind their children, then the state would take care of them. It's not specific, but nevertheless, it placed on the state a burden of responsibility to give women this choice. Now, of course, the government and its allies, its proxies, try to say that it's really an attack on women, that it says there are places in the home, this kind of caricaturing of the wording and so on. In fact, it's nonsense because there's another article, Article 45, which explicitly mentions the right of women to have occupations in the public domain and to go and work and earn a living for themselves. So, this was a complete caricature. And I think people understood that. The other one then was a redefinition of the family, which is Article 41. Again, all of this is 41, which defines the family, always has, as being based on marriage. That has been the source of some dissension over the years, some controversy, because more and more families were outside marriage, as it were. There were small F families, as it were, rather than a big F family, as arises in the Constitution. And they claimed to be sorting this out. But of course, they weren't sorting it out at all. When you actually catalogued the various categories of family who might theoretically benefit from such a change, none of them were benefiting at all. I went through this microscopically in the course of the campaign several times on videos and so on. So, really what it was, was to leverage the progressive vote, I think. That was one object, to get people excited again. They were getting nostalgic for 2015 and 2018 because they were becoming more and more popular. That was certainly one aspect. But, there were other aspects, which is that they were introducing into the constitution, or supposedly, that along with marriage, that also would be included something called durable relationships. And they refused or were unable to define what this meant. The result of it is that there were all kinds of proposals and suggestions that it might well mean, for example, polygamy, that it might mean the word appear durable appears in European law in the context of immigration. There was a very strong suspicion, which the government was unable to convincingly deny, that this was a measure that they needed to bring in in order to make way for what they call family reunification, so that if one person gets into Ireland, they can then apply to have their entire families brought in after them. That's already happening, by the way, without this. They say that something like an average of 20 people will follow anybody who gets in and gets citizenship of Ireland. They bring something like an average of 20 people with them afterwards. So this was another aspect of it. There were many, many theories posited about it. But one thing for sure was that the government was lying literally every day about it, trying to present this progressive veneer. And more and more, what was really I think staggering in the end in a certain sense, was that the people not alone saw it in a marginal way, they saw it in an overwhelming way, this was the start, I mean I don't think a single person, myself included predicted that we would have a 70-30 or whatever it was roughly, 3-1 result. For now, I mean, that was really miraculous and I've said to people that it was actually a kind of loaves and fishes that it was greater than the sum of all its parts, greater than anything that we thought was possible. It was like a miracle that all of the votes just keep tumbling out, tumbling out, no, no, no, no, no. And I've been saying that that no actually represents much more than what it might technically read as a response to the wording that was on the ballot paper, that it was really, I think, the expression of something that we hadn't even suspected was there, Because for four years now, the Irish people have labored under this tyranny of, you know, really abuse of power by the government, by the police force, by the courts. And a real tyranny that is really, I think, looks like it's getting its feet under the table for quite a long haul. And accompanied by that, there was what I call this concept, this climate of mutism, whereby people weren't able any longer to discuss certain things in public for fear that they would get into trouble, because this was very frequently happening. I mean, since the marriage referendum of 2015, Before that, for about a year, the LGBTgoons went on the streets and ensured that everybody got the message that we weren't allowed to talk about things that they had an interest in. And anybody who did was absolutely eviscerated, myself included, and was cancelled or demonised or whatever. That has had a huge effect on Irish culture, a culture that used to be very argumentative and garrulous, has now become almost paranoid, and kind of, you have this kind of culture of humming and hawing. If you get involved in a conversation with somebody and you say something that is even maybe two or three steps removed from a controversial issue, they will immediately know it and clam up. This has been happening now in our culture right across the country. When you think about it, I've been saying in the last week that actually for all its limitations, locations, the polling booth, that corner of the room in which the votes are being cast with the little table and the pencil and a little bit of a curtain in some instances, but even not, there's a kind of a metaphorical curtain. And that became the one place in Ireland that you could overcome your mutism, that you could put your mark on that paper and do it convincingly and in a firm hand. And I think that's really the meaning of it, that it was a no, no, no, no, no to just about everything that this government and its proxies have been trying to push over on Ireland for the last few years, including the mass immigration, essential replacement of the Irish population, including the vaccines, which really have killed now in Ireland something like 20,000 people over the past three years. I would say a conservative enough estimate not to mention the injuries of people; the many people who are ill now as a result of this and then of course we have the utterly corrupt media refusing to discuss any of this and to put out all kinds of misdirection concerning. John, can I just say, there's an interesting line in one of the articles on this. It said the scale of rejection spelled humiliation for the government, but also opposition parties and advocacy groups who had united to support a yes, yes vote. Tell us about that. It's not just the government, well the government is made up obviously of the three parties, the unholy alliance, of Fianna Fáil, Fianna Gael and, sorry, what was the other? The Green Party. Sorry, the Greens. The Green Party are a fairly traditional element in Irish politics, not so much in the ideology, but in the idea of the small party, because they're They're the tail that wags the dog. They have all the ideological ideas. The main parties have virtually no ideology whatsoever. Like they've been just catch-all parties for a century or whatever their existence has been. But yes, that idea, you see, what we've noticed increasingly over the last, say, 10, 15 years, particularly I think since 2011, we had an election that year, which I think was a critical moment in Irish life, when in fact everything seemed to change. We didn't notice it at the time, but moving on from that, it became clear that something radical had happened in the ruins of Irish culture, as it were, both spellings actually. And so, as we moved out from that, it became clear that really there was no opposition anymore. That all the parties were just different shades or different functions within a singular Ideology. Like the so-called left parties were, it's not that they would be stating the thing. They would sort of, they would become almost like the military wing of the mainstream parties, enforcing their diktats on the streets. If people went to protest about something outside the Houses of Parliament, the Leinster House, these people would up and mount a counter protest against them and call them all kinds of names. Like Nazis and white supremacists, all this nonsense, which has no place in Irish culture whatsoever. It is a kind of a uni-party, as they say, is the recent term for it. But, my own belief is that actually this is a somewhat distraction in the sense that we shouldn't anymore be looking at individual parties because, in fact, all of them are captured from outside. And the World Economic Forum is basically dictating pretty much everything that everybody thinks now. I mean, our so-called Taoiseach, God help us, I hate to call him that because it's an honourable title. It's a sacred title to me. And to have this appalling creep going swaggering around claiming that title for himself, it seems it's one of the great obscenities of of modern Ireland. But he, Brad Kerr. He is a member of the World Economic Forum. So is Martin, the leader of Fianna Fáil. They've been switching over the Taoiseach role for the last four years. Yeah, because that's quite strange. I mean, many of our viewers will not be from Ireland and will be surprised at the confusion system you have where they just swap every so often, because the three of them are in cahoots. That's the completely new thing. That's never happened before. But what it's about, you see, those two parties are the Civil War parties. Civil War back in 1922. Those parties grew out of it, and they became almost equivalent in popularity. They represented in some ways the divide of that Civil War. And for the best part of 100 years, they were like the main, they were the yin and yang. They were the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of the political system. And gradually, in the last 30, 40 years, the capacity of either of those parties to win an overall majority has dwindled and basically disappeared, evaporated. So now they need smaller parties. And that's been true for about 30 years. And as I say, what actually happens then is that the smaller party, no matter how small, if it's big enough to actually make the difference numerically, then it has the power to take over certain areas of policy in which the big parties have no interest whatsoever. And that's how you get things like migration, because they don't care about that. That's how you get social welfare policies, all that kind of stuff. This is kind of what's happened in the last, particularly since 2020, where there was a complete unanimity. I could name, with the fingers of one hand, the people in the parliament, a total of over200 people in between the two houses, that who actually have stood up and actually in in any way acquitted themselves decently in the last four years. The rest have just been nodding donkeys and going along with this great tyranny against the Irish people and the contempt that Radcliffe and his cronies show for the Irish people. Literally, almost like to the point of handing out straws and saying, suck it up, suck it up, suck it up. And this is where we are now, that our democracy has been taken away, for sure. I mean, that last week was a really a bit of a boost but that was only because they couldn't fix that. It was a referendum and they couldn't possibly predict what the turnout would be in order to ready up the votes in advance but I have no doubt that they would be trying to rectify that they're giving votes now to in local elections which we have to every immigrant who comes into Ireland so by the time that the Irish people get to the polls it'll all be over. These are people who don't even know how to spell the name of the country they're in many cases and this This is what's happening. The contempt these people have shown for our country is beyond belief. It is dizzying. It is nauseating. But the Irish people are told to shut up. And of course, the media, without which none of this will be possible, by the way. I mean, if we had decent, honest media, they would be calling the government out every day. But they're not. And so it remains to be seen now what effect this will have. I don't have any confidence that it's going to put any manners on this government because they are beyond arrogant, beyond traitorous, beyond redemption in my view. But at the same time, there is a possibility that in the next elections, we have three elections coming up now in the next year, in the next few months, actually, I would say,almost certainly. Well, we know for sure there's the European elections, European Parliament elections, and the local local elections are happening in June. Then there's a very strong probability that the general election will take place sometime in the autumn because it has to happen before this time next year. And of course, the longer they leave it, the less flexibility and wiggle room they'll have in order because, events, dear boy, events can take over and they don't want to do, they don't like events, you know. I think what will be very interesting then is will something emerge in these elections, which would, if you like, will be a kind of an equivalent to that no box on toilet paper in the form of independence, perhaps, or in the form of some form of new movement, some actual spontaneous voice of the Irish people might well be something that could happen. I hope so. And I feel so as well. I think that this is the moment that it happened before, Peter, back in 2011, when there was the really appalling events that happened in the wake of the economic meltdown, when the troika of the IMF, the World Bank and the European Commission, three entities, arrived as a kind of a coalition or a coalition. A kind of a joint policing visitation, shall we say, to basically take possession of Irish economic sovereignty. And that was a great humiliation, a moment of extraordinary sorrow and grief and rage in the Irish people. And that moment, I think, if you lit a match in Ireland at that time, the whole place would have gone up. But, what happened then was a bogus movement started and pretended that it was going to go and lead an alternative movement against these cretins, these cretinous thugs and traitors who are the mainstream parties. And instead, then at the very last minute, they blocked the hallway, as Bob Dylan said, they stood in the doorway, they blocked up the hall, and nobody could go through until the very last moment when they stepped aside. said they weren't going to run, and ushered in Mr. Enda Kenny, who became possibly the greatest destroyer in Irish history since Oliver Cromwell. Yeah. When I grew up in the 80s with Gareth Fitzgerald and Charles Hawkey back Fianna Gael, Fianna Fáil, there did seem to be a choice. And now it seems to be that there isn't really a choice for the voters and they've come together. Is that a fair assessment of where Ireland are? Yes, 100%, Peter. But, I think it's very important to, whereas we can go into the whole walk thing, as these parties are now, fixated with woke, contaminated with it. They're saturated with this nonsense and really assiduously pushing it. But I always remind people that none of this is spontaneous, that woke is not a spontaneous, naturalistic movement from the people or even any people. Of course, there are people pushing it, but they're just useful idiots. This has been, this is top-down, manipulation of an orchestration of our democracies. And it's happening everywhere now. These massive multibillionaires pumping money into this, into basically destructive political elements, Antifa, the LGBT goons, and so on and so on. Terrorist groups, essentially. Let's not mess around. They're terrorist groups. And using these to batter down the democratic structures of Western countries. That's what's happening. And you see, the people that we are looking at who are the puppets. They're the quokka-wodgers, I call them. That's the name for them, actually, the quokka-wodgers, people who are simply like wooden puppets of the puppet masters. They're filling space, placeholders. They're indistinguishable. It doesn't matter. I mean, rotating the role of Taoiseach is irrelevant because essentially, you could just have a showroom dummy sitting on the chair for the full four years. It doesn't matter who it is, except the only difference it makes is that the quality of the dribble that emerges from the mouths of Martin and Varadkar is somewhat variegated in the sense that, Varadkar is capable of saying the most disgusting things because he has no knowledge of Ireland. He's half Irish. He's an Irish mother and an Indian father. He has no love for Ireland whatsoever. He did a speech there the other day, apparently in America, where he was saying that St. Patrick was a single male immigrant. Nobody, I think, at the meeting where he said it, had the temerity to point out to him that actually St.Patrick was a victim of people traffickers. And that's exactly what's happening now. He's their principal ally in the destruction of Ireland. Well, how does that fit? Because interesting comment about Varadkar's background, his parents Indian. We, of course, here in the UK and England, it's the same with Sunak. And then in Wales, you've just got the new first minister. I think was born in Zambia, I think, Africa. And then, of course, you've got in Scotland and in London, Pakistani heritage. You kind of look around. And I think my issue is not necessarily that you've got that different background. My issue is the lack of integration and understanding of what it means to be this culture and this community and a lack of understanding. I think that's where Varadkar seems to have torn up the rule book and what it means to be Irish and wants to rewrite it. Oh, well, they're actively saying now that really there's no such thing as Irish culture and that, the people who live in Ireland, those people have been here for hundreds or maybe thousands of years. That they have no particular claim on this territory. Trade. This is something that the great Irish patriot, Wulff Tone, mourned about. He said, this country of ours is no sandbag. It's an ancient land honoured into antiquity by its valor, its piety, and its suffering. That's forgotten. People like Varadkar don't know the first thing about this and care less. They're like Trudeau in Canada, a completely vacant space, empty-headed. Narcissists, egomaniacs psychopaths. They are. And they are and traitors like they are really doing things now. I did a stream last week; there was somebody in America in Utah, and I was saying in the headline, I found myself saying this that what is happening cannot possibly be happening. That's really the way all of us feel now that this is like just something surreal real, that is beyond comprehension, because it wasn't possible for us to forget, to predict. That a person could be elected into the office of Taoiseach, who would be automatically a traitor, who would have no love for Ireland. It seemed to be axiomatic that in order to get there, you wanted to care, you had to care and love Ireland. These people have no love for Ireland. They are absolutely the enemies of Ireland now. You mentioned the two other referendums that happened or in effect on same-sex marriage and life or the lack of sanctity of life and those went through this this hasn't. Does that mean there is a growing resentment with the government. Is it a growing opposition and desire for conservative values where kind of is that coming from I know it's probably difficult to analyze it because this just happened a week ago but what are your thoughts on that? It's difficult. It's difficult because there are different explanations going around. I can only tell you what I believe, and it's based on just observation over a long time. I believe that it is. I've been saying, for the last two years about Ireland in this context. That the Irishman, Paddy, as he's called, and we don't mind him being called that. You can imagine him sitting in the pub, in a beautiful sunny evening. The shadows of the setting sun coming across the bar. Oh, I'm dreaming that. I can have this picture in my mind, John. And he's got a dazzle, as we say, a dashing of beer, and he's sticking it away. And then there's a couple of young fellas there, and they start messing, pushing around and maybe having a go at some of the women in the bar or whatever. And Paddy will sit there for a long time, and he'll sort of have a disapproving look but he won't say anything, but there will be a moment and I call it: the kick the chair moment. When he will just reef the chair from under him and he will get up and he'll get one of those guys and he'll have him slapped up against the wall and he will tell him the odds. That's the moment I think we've arrived at, that all of the contempt all of the hatred, these people go on about introducing hate speech law there is nobody in Ireland that is more hateful than the government towards its own people. 100 percent. The most hateful government, I think, in the world at this point. They are abysmal. They're appalling. So, this is the moment when I think people took that in. They took it in. They took it in. We suck it up. OK. But then one day they said, no, no more. And that's what happened on Friday week, last Friday, Friday week. That's what happened because, you can push people so far. A lot of this has to do with Ireland's kind of inheritance of post-colonial self-hatred, whereby they can convince us that we're white supremacists, even though we have no history of slavery or anything like that, except being slaves ourselves, our ancestors being slaves. But there is, as Franz Fallon wrote about many years ago, back in the 50s, the pathologies that infect a country that's been colonized are such as to weaken them in a terrible way in the face of the possibility of independence, that they cannot stand up for themselves. And you can see this now. I mean, all over Irish culture now on magazines, on hoardings, in television advertisements, there's nothing but black faces. You would swear that Ireland was an African country. This is part of the gaslighting, that attack that has been mounted against the Irish people. And people, Irish people, you see genuinely because they don't. They don't understand what's happening because the word racist is a kind of a spell word, which is used, I call it like a, like it's like a cattle prod, and as soon as you say something, and a big space opens up around you because nobody wants to be near somebody who's a racist. But in fact, we need to begin to understand that these are just words and sticks and stones and so on. If we allow this to happen it means that we will lose our metaphysical home that our children and our grandchildren will be homeless in the world that's what's going to happen, because it's already clear from a lot of these people who are coming in that they're shouting the odds and saying that basically Irish people just better get up and leave their own country, because they're not welcome anymore. These are outsiders who've been here a wet weekend. They're being trained in this you asked me. I forgot to mention this thing Ireland has something like 35,000 NGOs 35,000 Wow And and these people, in other words they're non-governmental organization. what's a non-government at mental organization? That's a government which works that's in organization which works for the government, but pretends not to. Ireland has been governed now to non-government mental organizations and these people are bringing in these foreigners and they're training them. They're coaching them how to attack the Irish people, how to make a claim on Ireland. I read an article somebody sent me last week where some guy who came here from Chechnya, and he was saying how great it was that you could come to Ireland and become Irish within hours. Whereas, you could never become Japanese or Chinese, which, of course, is true. I mean, if I went to Japan, I think it would take about 10,000 years before a relation of mine might be Japanese. And rightly so. Rightly so. There's nothing racist about that. That's just the way things are. That's every country, including the African countries, want to uphold their own ethnicity, integrity and nationhood. Why the hell can Ireland not do the same? It seems we can't. And our own government telling us and our own media is telling us that we can't. Some background, there were 160 members in the Dáil of the Irish Parliament and the government is 80. I was quite surprised at that, because you talk about a government wanting extra seats to get a bigger majority, but it seems though you look who's the opposition and you've got Sinn Féin and they are even more captured by the woke agenda than anyone. So you kind of look; it's kind of the government are rubbing it in people's noses, because they don't actually need a majority or a big majority, because everyone else seems to be fitting into this agenda. Yeah, that's a really important point, Peter. It's really important because, you see, what happened in 2020 is really instructive. We had an election in 2020 in February. I actually ran myself. The only time in my life I've ever run for an election because things were looking so bad. I ran in the worst constituency in Ireland, actually, Dundee, which is the only constituency which voted yes in this referendum. So, that'll just show you how demoralised I was, let's say. But, what happened then was that the government, outgoing government, was basically hammered. Varadkar for government were hammered. There was a standoff for for several months when there was negotiations and then something happened that was totally, not likely but each of the parties Fianna Gael, and Fianna Fáil, in the previous election and for years, and decades, before that has said that they would never ever ever coalesce with the other. Then they did. What we had then was from from from February through until late June of that year: we had Radcliffe running a kind of a caretaker government in the period when the most draconian and radical and unprecedented laws were introduced into Irish society. Nothing like them ever before, the COVID laws. And then in July, Martin, they went into coalition then, and we had Martin, Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael in coalition doing the same thing, implementing the same policies without question. And anybody who did question, as I did, and others, we got hammered and treated like dirt in the courts, in the media, you name it. That's the thing; those parties, they know that no matter what happens, they can rig up the arithmetic. That there's nothing for further. There's nowhere as things stand unless you get a huge tranche of independents who have the power to nullify whatever power these small parties will have. But you see, one of the factors involved here now, they don't have a this election for the general election where they'll be able to get immigrants and Ukrainians and all these people to vote. But that's probably in a very short order, possibly by the next general election, they will have organised that. And means that increasingly, just as in terms of the birth rate, Ireland is already being overtaken. The population is already beginning to be, you know, you can see that the incoming population is growing at a much faster rate than the Irish population, in the indigenous population because we have European demographics. We had very briefly, some time ago. Surges after John Paul visited in 79 and so on. We had much higher birth rates than the rest of Europe, but not anymore. And so essentially what we're looking at right across Europe is a replacement of population. Intimidation and the way you can really know this is that they've decided that the word replacement is a hate word and and when they say that you're over the target because, whenever something becomes dead obvious they make it quasi-illegal they make it into a crime. I've seen that. Can I ask it's it's weird because there's a positive and a negative I see. The negative is that there doesn't seem to be a vocal opposition to what is happening or a grouping that is standing for family, for the rights of women, a pro-women party. And so there doesn't seem to be that on one side. But yet, on the other side, the people have rejected what they were told to vote for, not only by the politicians, by every political party, but also by the media. Everything was telling them to do one thing and they've done something else and yes, I mean that rebelliousness, I love, but I'm wondering in the middle of that, there a group movement that can appear to begin to stand up, because Ireland doesn't really have a populist movement; like we're seeing in every European country. Except Britain and Ireland. We're left on the sidelines. Yeah, yeah. Really there was never be this is ironic given that that Edmund Burke was an Irishman. There's been no real conservative party. I mean, they've been called, Fine Gael and Fine Fáil were called conservative parties, but they had no philosophy whatsoever. When Hardy came to Hardy, they switched to the woke side. There's no intellectual, interesting party that puts forward family-related policies, say like Viktor Orban does in Hungary or anything like that. It's purely a kind of reactive opposition. That's very, very dismaying because, we desperately need. One of the problems I think here, Peter, is ironically, that is a residual effect of the war against the Catholic Church, which has succeeded in, particularly the clerical abuse scandals, have succeeded in making people very wary of speaking about, what you might call Catholic issues, whether that's expressed in family or abortion or whatever. So, those issues tend to be leveraged by the leftist and liberal parties to actually agitate people so as they actually will go against whatever the church is recommending. That's been the pattern going right back in the last, certainly in the last decade or so, that that was very strong in the referendums. You see that this is a real problem because, if you go on the media in Ireland, if you would go on, if you would be let on, on the national broadcaster now, you would be harangued and harassed if you were proposing. Nobody would say: “OK, well, what do you got to say?” And then: ”OK, well, I don't agree with that," but here's my position.” And that's gone. You're just harangued and you're sneered at, not necessarily just by the opposition that's in the studio, but by the presenter, probably foremost among them. That's the way that these things have gone now. And you have all these newspapers campaigning, activists. They purport to be, I guess, in the referendum recently, they purported to be covering it. But in fact, they were fighting for the yes side. And this has been the standard approach like that. They tell all these lies. I mean, like there's a very important lie that I want to just call out, which is the Tune Babies Hooks lie, which happened about 10 years ago. Where there was allegations made that 800 babies had been killed by nuns in Tum and buried in a septic tank. There's been a commission of inquiry that has spent 10 years investigating this and they have not found one skeleton, one bone of a child in a septic tank. Yet, the news has not gone around the world anything like to the extent that the first story went round. And people still out there that I meet think it is absolutely gospel truth that nuns killed 800 children and buried their bodies in a septic tank. That is a complete and utter lie. And they have failed after 10 years of trying. And yet that issue was used, was leveraged in the 2018 referendum to defeat the voice of the church, to nullify what the church was saying on the abortion question, because the implication was, well, they don't care about children. This is what goes on in Ireland. It is obscene. It's utterly obscene. And one feels, distraught in the face of it. Grease stricken to see what has become possible in our beautiful country. Yeah, well the media or the virus and we've seen that time and time again. John I really do appreciate coming on. When I saw that result I was so happy, especially seeing the depression on Varadkar's face that even brought more joy. I'd seen them pull back, and of course, they haven't given up, and they will come back I'm sure they will try and mix this type of thing part of their their manifesto moving forward. But, it is a moment to celebrate, I think, in the pushback. Thanks so much for coming on and sharing it, John. Thank you very much, Peter. Nice to talk to you
Ukrainska gästregissören Tamara Trunova sätter upp pjäsen Bad Roads, om kriget i östra Ukraina, på Göteborgs stadsteater. Fredrik Wadström intervjuar Trunova om att sätta upp pjäsen i ett land utan modern erfarenhet av krig. Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radio Play. ”Bad Roads” är skriven av den internationellt uppmärksammade ukrainska dramatikern Natalka Vorozjbyt och består av sex avslutade episoder om livet i krigszonen. Tamara Trunova har tidigare satt upp pjäsen både på sin egen teater i Kiev, Teatern vid vänstra flodstranden, och i Litauen. Nu är det Sverigepremiär för ”Bad Roads” när den går upp på Göteborgs stadsteater.Reporter: Fredrik Wadström
Tourism, businesses, jobs, and livelihoods are under threat in the Drakensberg region where bad roads and unrepaired infrastructure have made travel perilous. In this interview with BizNews, Megan Bedingham of the Cavern, a popular ‘Berg resort, says occupancies in December last year (2023) in the Midlands and the Drakensberg area dropped to 56%. She identifies the dire state of infrastructure as the “greatest threat”, with more and more potholes, washed out culverts and subsided roads. She details the intensive lobbying to government for help, and describes how the community has to do the smaller jobs themselves while the Department of Transport doesn't seem to have the capacity to roll out all the jobs that they have promised to do.
Tapping The Keg Daily discusses the Milwaukee Bucks, the Milwaukee Brewers, and the Green Bay Packers. Charlie talks about the Milwaukee Bucks losing yet another game. This time to the Phoenix Suns. Charlie explains why no one should freak out about what happened + the tap list from the game (2:00). Charlie moves on to talk about the Milwaukee Brewers adding Jakob Junis and the idea of potentially trading Willy Adames (16:00). Lastly, Charlie talks about the defensive coaching staff that the Green Bay Packers are putting together and why he's excited for next year (26:00).
PREVIEW: From a longer conversation, Gregory Copley advocates reawakening the industrial base in North America and re-arming for the bad road ahead. https://breakingdefense.com/2023/10/armys-munition-organic-industrial-base-remains-fy24-focus-though-politics-inflation-arent-helping/
Where do the Giants go from here? Murph and Mac unpack the team's historically bad road stretch and hear listeners' thoughts on approaching the future in today's Big HitSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Where do the Giants go from here? Murph and Mac unpack the team's historically bad road stretch and hear listeners' thoughts on approaching the future in today's Big HitSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
My guest today is Mr. John Waters, a journalist and Christian convert in Ireland. He has written several books, the most recent being Give Us Back the Bad Roads, which tells the story of how Ireland changed from being the most conservative country in Europe to one of the most liberal in a period of several decades. He wrote for a major newspaper until he was removed due to his stance against homosexual marriage and abortion. We talk about Irish history, economics, government, and literature. Books Give Us Back the Bad Roads Was it For This? Why Ireland Lost the Plot Articles The End of Pseudo-Liberalism Broken Family, Broken Country
I'm desperate to talk about ANYthing other than the LATEST in a long long line of indictments against you-know-who, so good news! A west Georgia highway makes the top 50 list of "most dangerous," and I'm quite familiar with it. Of course we'll cover the latest indictments, too, and MARVEL at the sad, pathetic & bootlicking reactions from the right.
Our second episode featuring Hot New Releases from our past guests. This time we're highlighting new books that released in the month of May. We'll introduce you to new historical fiction from Linda Rosen, an exciting new book club novel by Laura Hankin, and a thriller from Regina Buttner. The Emerald Necklace, like Linda Rosen's prior work, features a unique piece of jewelry, behind which lies a mystery. A generational story about envy and jealousy, friendship, and family, set between 1969-1971 when women were fighting for equality. The Daydreams by Laura Hankin is new book club fiction. A deliciously entertaining novel about the stars of a popular teen show from the early 2000s—and the reunion special, thirteen years after their scandalous flameout. With Down a Bad Road, Regina Buttner made a leap into the exciting world of domestic thrillers and suspense. She was raised in Upstate New York and spent many years exploring the small towns and back roads of the Adirondack mountain region in which her new book is set. Find the recommended books, the author's social media links, and the video version of this episode at www.BestofWomensFiction.com All books featured on the podcast are listed in The Best of Women's Fiction List at www.bookshop.org and amazon.com Lainey's author website: www.LaineyCameron.com
Okay, here's the situation: Zack just got a fancy Aston Martin and he's getting ready to go on a road trip to the SPAM Museum in Austin, Minnesota (obviously). However, he's only got room for one passenger in his car, so one of the other two Baconsale hosts will have to stay behind. And Zack is going to make his decision on who he's taking with him based solely on the snacks they're providing for the journey. We asked you, the listener, for suggestions of the worst road trip food out there, and now it's up to Joel and Kent to pick the best of the bad and see if they can persuade Zack to let them ride shotgun. Press play to learn the fanciest way to pronounce pistachios.
Episode 164 - The Boys Are OUT on Pickleball, Bad Road Race Prizes, People Are Mad Again About NFL Stars Winning Races & Katelyn Tuohy is The Real Deal by P2E Studios
Patrick discusses the Golden State Warriors' continued road woes after losing to the Atlanta Hawks and Memphis Grizzlies on back-to-back nights. The shorthanded team is struggling to make it into the playoffs and avoid the play-in. (0:00) Warriors 0-3 on this 5-game road trip (3:01) Jonathan Kuminga is the future... and probably the present (6:01) W's back at .500 AGAIN (7:10) Squad still not whole (8:19) W's fans should just leave Andrew Wiggins alone (11:55) Dub Nation attacking itself (15:16) Optics of Klay Thompson's 4-rings flex (16:14) Next up: The final 10 games WATCH ALL PODCAST EPISODES ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL youtube.com/OaklandWarriors SUPPORT THE SHOW paypal.com/support/OaklandWarriors patreon.com/OaklandWarriors BUY AN OAKLAND WARRIORS T-SHIRT oaklandwarriors.myshopify.com CONNECT WITH PATRICK Twitter: twitter.com/OaklandWarriors Mastodon: sfba.social/@warriors Post: post.news/warriors Facebook: facebook.com/OaklandWarriors QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, OR BUSINESS INQUIRIES: oaklandwarriors.com@gmail.com MUSIC BY PAPER SON: paperson.bandcamp.com soundcloud.com/paper-son TBPN: thebasketballpodcastnetwork.com Gambling Problem? Call (800) 327-5050 or visit gamblinghelplinema.org (MA), Call 877- 8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY), If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling 1-800-GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537) (CO/IL/IN/LA/MD/MI/NJ/OH/PA/TN/WV/WY), 1-800-NEXT STEP (AZ), 1-800-522- 4700 (KS/NH), 888-789-7777/visit ccpg.org (CT), 1-800-BETS OFF (IA), visit OPGR.org (OR), or 1-888-532-3500 (VA). 21+ (18+ NH/WY). Physically present in AZ/CO/CT/IL/IN/IA/KS/LA(select parishes)/MA/MD/MI /NH /NJ/ NY/OH/OR/PA/TN/VA/WV/WY only. VOID IN ONT. Eligibility restrictions apply. Bonus bets (void in NH/OR): Valid 1 per new customer. Min. $5 deposit. Min $5 bet. Promo code req. $200 issued as eight (8) $25 bonus bets. Bonus bets are non-cashable and cannot be withdrawn. Bonus bets must be wagered 1x and stake is not included in any returns or winnings. Bonus Bets expire 7 days (168 hours) after being awarded. Promotional offer period ends 3/19/23 at 11:59 PM ET. See terms at sportsbook.draftkings.com/basketballterms No Sweat Bet (Void in OR): Valid 1 offer per customer. Opt in req. Valid only on college basketball bets 3/13/23 - 3/19/23. First bet after opting in must lose. Paid as one (1) bonus bet based on amount of initial losing bet. Max $10 bonus bet awarded. Bonus bets expire 7 days (168 hours) after being awarded. See terms at sportsbook.draftkings.com/basketballterms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A new report has found that Malaysians lost 159 hours last year on the road during peak hours. To explore this, first we looked back at a previous interview with Dr Ahmad Farhan Mohd Sadullah, Professor of Transport Engineering from Universiti Sains Malaysia. Then, we also hear from experts, including: - Professor Dr Muhammad Zaly Shah, Professor of Transportation and Logistics at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia - Aziff Azuddin, Independent Urban Mobility Researcher - Bernard Chong, Transport Activist, TransitMalaysiaAnd of course, we had to ask our listeners about their driving experiences and woes as well (alongside asking for possible solutions).Image Credit: Asia Travel, Shutterstock.com
We got some really great questions so we made a part 2
Today Leslie sits down with Irina Maleeva to discuss her fascinating career in TV and Film, what it was like to be discovered by Fellini and much more.More about Irina:Star of stage, screen, television, cabaret and the world of music, Irina Maleeva is a true multifaceted international sensation. The daughter of a famed Bulgarian stage actress and an aristocratic Italian statesman, Maleeva first established herself as a child performer in her native Bulgaria -- and from there her career and talents would bring her to the glittering global stage.The world of Irina Maleeva jettisoned into the cinematic spotlight when she was discovered by the legendary Federico Fellini at age 15 and would go on to perform in three of his highly-acclaimed movies: Satyricon; Spirits of the Dead; and Roma. Later Maleeva was chosen for the lead part of Jessica in the film, "The Merchant of Venice" playing opposite Orson Welles's Schylock. The film was also directed by Orson Welles.Included in her motion picture accomplishments: studying and working with iconic Italian directors Luchino Visconti and Roberto Rossellini and starring in more than 30 leading roles in European and American films opposite such luminaries as James Mason, Valentina Cortese and Terence Stamp, plus notable actors Susan Sarandon, Charles Grodin, David Duchovny, Anthony Franciosa and Klaus Kinski, to name a few.For her portrayal as a demented countess in the cult crime mystery film Union City, Maleeva appeared opposite rockers Debbie Harry and Pat Benatar and for her memorable role in this film she was awarded at the Toronto Film Festival. Later she would play the part of Mrs. Hasadan in the screwball comedy of errors Wasabi Tuna.Among her other acting achievements are the lead in the Italian-French television series Poly in Venice and The Girl without Identity. American television roles include appearing as a guest star on Days of our Lives, The Gilmore Girls, Pensacola, Just Shoot Me, Six Feet Under, Angel and Threshold. Maleeva was a principal recurring actress on the television series Cracking Up and the award-winning soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. She has also guest starred on American Body Shop and the critically acclaimed science fiction drama series Heroes, not to mention appearing in the role of Ruba in the HBO-produced show Twelve Miles of Bad Road. Maleeva has co-starred opposite Susan Sarandon in the comedy-drama film The Meddler and guest-starred in the television crime drama series Aquarius with David Duchovny.
Episode one hundred and forty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Hey Joe" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and is the longest episode to date, at over two hours. Patreon backers also have a twenty-two-minute bonus episode available, on "Making Time" by The Creation. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I've put together a Mixcloud mix containing all the music excerpted in this episode. For information on the Byrds, I relied mostly on Timeless Flight Revisited by Johnny Rogan, with some information from Chris Hillman's autobiography. Information on Arthur Lee and Love came from Forever Changes: Arthur Lee and the Book of Love by John Einarson, and Arthur Lee: Alone Again Or by Barney Hoskyns. Information on Gary Usher's work with the Surfaris and the Sons of Adam came from The California Sound by Stephen McParland, which can be found at https://payhip.com/CMusicBooks Information on Jimi Hendrix came from Room Full of Mirrors by Charles R. Cross, Crosstown Traffic by Charles Shaar Murray, and Wild Thing by Philip Norman. Information on the history of "Hey Joe" itself came from all these sources plus Hey Joe: The Unauthorised Biography of a Rock Classic by Marc Shapiro, though note that most of that book is about post-1967 cover versions. Most of the pre-Experience session work by Jimi Hendrix I excerpt in this episode is on this box set of alternate takes and live recordings. And "Hey Joe" can be found on Are You Experienced? Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Just a quick note before we start – this episode deals with a song whose basic subject is a man murdering a woman, and that song also contains references to guns, and in some versions to cocaine use. Some versions excerpted also contain misogynistic slurs. If those things are likely to upset you, please skip this episode, as the whole episode focusses on that song. I would hope it goes without saying that I don't approve of misogyny, intimate partner violence, or murder, and my discussing a song does not mean I condone acts depicted in its lyrics, and the episode itself deals with the writing and recording of the song rather than its subject matter, but it would be impossible to talk about the record without excerpting the song. The normalisation of violence against women in rock music lyrics is a subject I will come back to, but did not have room for in what is already a very long episode. Anyway, on with the show. Let's talk about the folk process, shall we? We've talked before, like in the episodes on "Stagger Lee" and "Ida Red", about how there are some songs that aren't really individual songs in themselves, but are instead collections of related songs that might happen to share a name, or a title, or a story, or a melody, but which might be different in other ways. There are probably more songs that are like this than songs that aren't, and it doesn't just apply to folk songs, although that's where we see it most notably. You only have to look at the way a song like "Hound Dog" changed from the Willie Mae Thornton version to the version by Elvis, which only shared a handful of words with the original. Songs change, and recombine, and everyone who sings them brings something different to them, until they change in ways that nobody could have predicted, like a game of telephone. But there usually remains a core, an archetypal story or idea which remains constant no matter how much the song changes. Like Stagger Lee shooting Billy in a bar over a hat, or Frankie killing her man -- sometimes the man is Al, sometimes he's Johnny, but he always done her wrong. And one of those stories is about a man who shoots his cheating woman with a forty-four, and tries to escape -- sometimes to a town called Jericho, and sometimes to Juarez, Mexico. The first version of this song we have a recording of is by Clarence Ashley, in 1929, a recording of an older folk song that was called, in his version, "Little Sadie": [Excerpt: Clarence Ashley, "Little Sadie"] At some point, somebody seems to have noticed that that song has a slight melodic similarity to another family of songs, the family known as "Cocaine Blues" or "Take a Whiff on Me", which was popular around the same time: [Excerpt: The Memphis Jug Band, "Cocaine Habit Blues"] And so the two songs became combined, and the protagonist of "Little Sadie" now had a reason to kill his woman -- a reason other than her cheating, that is. He had taken a shot of cocaine before shooting her. The first recording of this version, under the name "Cocaine Blues" seems to have been a Western Swing version by W. A. Nichol's Western Aces: [Excerpt: W.A. Nichol's Western Aces, "Cocaine Blues"] Woody Guthrie recorded a version around the same time -- I've seen different dates and so don't know for sure if it was before or after Nichol's version -- and his version had himself credited as songwriter, and included this last verse which doesn't seem to appear on any earlier recordings of the song: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, "Cocaine Blues"] That doesn't appear on many later recordings either, but it did clearly influence yet another song -- Mose Allison's classic jazz number "Parchman Farm": [Excerpt: Mose Allison, "Parchman Farm"] The most famous recordings of the song, though, were by Johnny Cash, who recorded it as both "Cocaine Blues" and as "Transfusion Blues". In Cash's version of the song, the murderer gets sentenced to "ninety-nine years in the Folsom pen", so it made sense that Cash would perform that on his most famous album, the live album of his January 1968 concerts at Folsom Prison, which revitalised his career after several years of limited success: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "Cocaine Blues (live at Folsom Prison)"] While that was Cash's first live recording at a prison, though, it wasn't the first show he played at a prison -- ever since the success of his single "Folsom Prison Blues" he'd been something of a hero to prisoners, and he had been doing shows in prisons for eleven years by the time of that recording. And on one of those shows he had as his support act a man named Billy Roberts, who performed his own song which followed the same broad outlines as "Cocaine Blues" -- a man with a forty-four who goes out to shoot his woman and then escapes to Mexico. Roberts was an obscure folk singer, who never had much success, but who was good with people. He'd been part of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1950s, and at a gig at Gerde's Folk City he'd met a woman named Niela Miller, an aspiring songwriter, and had struck up a relationship with her. Miller only ever wrote one song that got recorded by anyone else, a song called "Mean World Blues" that was recorded by Dave Van Ronk: [Excerpt: Dave Van Ronk, "Mean World Blues"] Now, that's an original song, but it does bear a certain melodic resemblance to another old folk song, one known as "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" or "In the Pines", or sometimes "Black Girl": [Excerpt: Lead Belly, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?"] Miller was clearly familiar with the tradition from which "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" comes -- it's a type of folk song where someone asks a question and then someone else answers it, and this repeats, building up a story. This is a very old folk song format, and you hear it for example in "Lord Randall", the song on which Bob Dylan based "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall": [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl, "Lord Randall"] I say she was clearly familiar with it, because the other song she wrote that anyone's heard was based very much around that idea. "Baby Please Don't Go To Town" is a question-and-answer song in precisely that form, but with an unusual chord progression for a folk song. You may remember back in the episode on "Eight Miles High" I talked about the circle of fifths -- a chord progression which either increases or decreases by a fifth for every chord, so it might go C-G-D-A-E [demonstrates] That's a common progression in pop and jazz, but not really so much in folk, but it's the one that Miller had used for "Baby, Please Don't Go to Town", and she'd taught Roberts that song, which she only recorded much later: [Excerpt: Niela Miller, "Baby, Please Don't Go To Town"] After Roberts and Miller broke up, Miller kept playing that melody, but he changed the lyrics. The lyrics he added had several influences. There was that question-and-answer folk-song format, there's the story of "Cocaine Blues" with its protagonist getting a forty-four to shoot his woman down before heading to Mexico, and there's also a country hit from 1953. "Hey, Joe!" was originally recorded by Carl Smith, one of the most popular country singers of the early fifties: [Excerpt: Carl Smith, "Hey Joe!"] That was written by Boudleaux Bryant, a few years before the songs he co-wrote for the Everly Brothers, and became a country number one, staying at the top for eight weeks. It didn't make the pop chart, but a pop cover version of it by Frankie Laine made the top ten in the US: [Excerpt: Frankie Laine, "Hey Joe"] Laine's record did even better in the UK, where it made number one, at a point where Laine was the biggest star in music in Britain -- at the time the UK charts only had a top twelve, and at one point four of the singles in the top twelve were by Laine, including that one. There was also an answer record by Kitty Wells which made the country top ten later that year: [Excerpt: Kitty Wells, "Hey Joe"] Oddly, despite it being a very big hit, that "Hey Joe" had almost no further cover versions for twenty years, though it did become part of the Searchers' setlist, and was included on their Live at the Star Club album in 1963, in an arrangement that owed a lot to "What'd I Say": [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Hey Joe"] But that song was clearly on Roberts' mind when, as so many American folk musicians did, he travelled to the UK in the late fifties and became briefly involved in the burgeoning UK folk movement. In particular, he spent some time with a twelve-string guitar player from Edinburgh called Len Partridge, who was also a mentor to Bert Jansch, and who was apparently an extraordinary musician, though I know of no recordings of his work. Partridge helped Roberts finish up the song, though Partridge is about the only person in this story who *didn't* claim a writing credit for it at one time or another, saying that he just helped Roberts out and that Roberts deserved all the credit. The first known recording of the completed song is from 1962, a few years after Roberts had returned to the US, though it didn't surface until decades later: [Excerpt: Billy Roberts, "Hey Joe"] Roberts was performing this song regularly on the folk circuit, and around the time of that recording he also finally got round to registering the copyright, several years after it was written. When Miller heard the song, she was furious, and she later said "Imagine my surprise when I heard Hey Joe by Billy Roberts. There was my tune, my chord progression, my question/answer format. He dropped the bridge that was in my song and changed it enough so that the copyright did not protect me from his plagiarism... I decided not to go through with all the complications of dealing with him. He never contacted me about it or gave me any credit. He knows he committed a morally reprehensible act. He never was man enough to make amends and apologize to me, or to give credit for the inspiration. Dealing with all that was also why I made the decision not to become a professional songwriter. It left a bad taste in my mouth.” Pete Seeger, a friend of Miller's, was outraged by the injustice and offered to testify on her behalf should she decide to take Roberts to court, but she never did. Some time around this point, Roberts also played on that prison bill with Johnny Cash, and what happened next is hard to pin down. I've read several different versions of the story, which change the date and which prison this was in, and none of the details in any story hang together properly -- everything introduces weird inconsistencies and things which just make no sense at all. Something like this basic outline of the story seems to have happened, but the outline itself is weird, and we'll probably never know the truth. Roberts played his set, and one of the songs he played was "Hey Joe", and at some point he got talking to one of the prisoners in the audience, Dino Valenti. We've met Valenti before, in the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man" -- he was a singer/songwriter himself, and would later be the lead singer of Quicksilver Messenger Service, but he's probably best known for having written "Get Together": [Excerpt: Dino Valenti, "Get Together"] As we heard in the "Mr. Tambourine Man" episode, Valenti actually sold off his rights to that song to pay for his bail at one point, but he was in and out of prison several times because of drug busts. At this point, or so the story goes, he was eligible for parole, but he needed to prove he had a possible income when he got out, and one way he wanted to do that was to show that he had written a song that could be a hit he could make money off, but he didn't have such a song. He talked about his predicament with Roberts, who agreed to let him claim to have written "Hey Joe" so he could get out of prison. He did make that claim, and when he got out of prison he continued making the claim, and registered the copyright to "Hey Joe" in his own name -- even though Roberts had already registered it -- and signed a publishing deal for it with Third Story Music, a company owned by Herb Cohen, the future manager of the Mothers of Invention, and Cohen's brother Mutt. Valenti was a popular face on the folk scene, and he played "his" song to many people, but two in particular would influence the way the song would develop, both of them people we've seen relatively recently in episodes of the podcast. One of them, Vince Martin, we'll come back to later, but the other was David Crosby, and so let's talk about him and the Byrds a bit more. Crosby and Valenti had been friends long before the Byrds formed, and indeed we heard in the "Mr. Tambourine Man" episode how the group had named themselves after Valenti's song "Birdses": [Excerpt: Dino Valenti, "Birdses"] And Crosby *loved* "Hey Joe", which he believed was another of Valenti's songs. He'd perform it every chance he got, playing it solo on guitar in an arrangement that other people have compared to Mose Allison. He'd tried to get it on the first two Byrds albums, but had been turned down, mostly because of their manager and uncredited co-producer Jim Dickson, who had strong opinions about it, saying later "Some of the songs that David would bring in from the outside were perfectly valid songs for other people, but did not seem to be compatible with the Byrds' myth. And he may not have liked the Byrds' myth. He fought for 'Hey Joe' and he did it. As long as I could say 'No!' I did, and when I couldn't any more they did it. You had to give him something somewhere. I just wish it was something else... 'Hey Joe' I was bitterly opposed to. A song about a guy who murders his girlfriend in a jealous rage and is on the way to Mexico with a gun in his hand. It was not what I saw as a Byrds song." Indeed, Dickson was so opposed to the song that he would later say “One of the reasons David engineered my getting thrown out was because I would not let Hey Joe be on the Turn! Turn! Turn! album.” Dickson was, though, still working with the band when they got round to recording it. That came during the recording of their Fifth Dimension album, the album which included "Eight Miles High". That album was mostly recorded after the departure of Gene Clark, which was where we left the group at the end of the "Eight Miles High" episode, and the loss of their main songwriter meant that they were struggling for material -- doubly so since they also decided they were going to move away from Dylan covers. This meant that they had to rely on original material from the group's less commercial songwriters, and on a few folk songs, mostly learned from Pete Seeger The album ended up with only eleven songs on it, compared to the twelve that was normal for American albums at that time, and the singles on it after "Eight Miles High" weren't particularly promising as to the group's ability to come up with commercial material. The next single, "5D", a song by Roger McGuinn about the fifth dimension, was a waltz-time song that both Crosby and Chris Hillman were enthused by. It featured organ by Van Dyke Parks, and McGuinn said of the organ part "When he came into the studio I told him to think Bach. He was already thinking Bach before that anyway.": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "5D"] While the group liked it, though, that didn't make the top forty. The next single did, just about -- a song that McGuinn had written as an attempt at communicating with alien life. He hoped that it would be played on the radio, and that the radio waves would eventually reach aliens, who would hear it and respond: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mr. Spaceman"] The "Fifth Dimension" album did significantly worse, both critically and commercially, than their previous albums, and the group would soon drop Allen Stanton, the producer, in favour of Gary Usher, Brian Wilson's old songwriting partner. But the desperation for material meant that the group agreed to record the song which they still thought at that time had been written by Crosby's friend, though nobody other than Crosby was happy with it, and even Crosby later said "It was a mistake. I shouldn't have done it. Everybody makes mistakes." McGuinn said later "The reason Crosby did lead on 'Hey Joe' was because it was *his* song. He didn't write it but he was responsible for finding it. He'd wanted to do it for years but we would never let him.": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Hey Joe"] Of course, that arrangement is very far from the Mose Allison style version Crosby had been doing previously. And the reason for that can be found in the full version of that McGuinn quote, because the full version continues "He'd wanted to do it for years but we would never let him. Then both Love and The Leaves had a minor hit with it and David got so angry that we had to let him do it. His version wasn't that hot because he wasn't a strong lead vocalist." The arrangement we just heard was the arrangement that by this point almost every group on the Sunset Strip scene was playing. And the reason for that was because of another friend of Crosby's, someone who had been a roadie for the Byrds -- Bryan MacLean. MacLean and Crosby had been very close because they were both from very similar backgrounds -- they were both Hollywood brats with huge egos. MacLean later said "Crosby and I got on perfectly. I didn't understand what everybody was complaining about, because he was just like me!" MacLean was, if anything, from an even more privileged background than Crosby. His father was an architect who'd designed houses for Elizabeth Taylor and Dean Martin, his neighbour when growing up was Frederick Loewe, the composer of My Fair Lady. He learned to swim in Elizabeth Taylor's private pool, and his first girlfriend was Liza Minelli. Another early girlfriend was Jackie DeShannon, the singer-songwriter who did the original version of "Needles and Pins", who he was introduced to by Sharon Sheeley, whose name you will remember from many previous episodes. MacLean had wanted to be an artist until his late teens, when he walked into a shop in Westwood which sometimes sold his paintings, the Sandal Shop, and heard some people singing folk songs there. He decided he wanted to be a folk singer, and soon started performing at the Balladeer, a club which would later be renamed the Troubadour, playing songs like Robert Johnson's "Cross Roads Blues", which had recently become a staple of the folk repertoire after John Hammond put out the King of the Delta Blues Singers album: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Cross Roads Blues"] Reading interviews with people who knew MacLean at the time, the same phrase keeps coming up. John Kay, later the lead singer of Steppenwolf, said "There was a young kid, Bryan MacLean, kind of cocky but nonetheless a nice kid, who hung around Crosby and McGuinn" while Chris Hillman said "He was a pretty good kid but a wee bit cocky." He was a fan of the various musicians who later formed the Byrds, and was also an admirer of a young guitarist on the scene named Ryland Cooder, and of a blues singer on the scene named Taj Mahal. He apparently was briefly in a band with Taj Mahal, called Summer's Children, who as far as I can tell had no connection to the duo that Curt Boettcher later formed of the same name, before Taj Mahal and Cooder formed The Rising Sons, a multi-racial blues band who were for a while the main rivals to the Byrds on the scene. MacLean, though, firmly hitched himself to the Byrds, and particularly to Crosby. He became a roadie on their first tour, and Hillman said "He was a hard-working guy on our behalf. As I recall, he pretty much answered to Crosby and was David's assistant, to put it diplomatically – more like his gofer, in fact." But MacLean wasn't cut out for the hard work that being a roadie required, and after being the Byrds' roadie for about thirty shows, he started making mistakes, and when they went off on their UK tour they decided not to keep employing him. He was heartbroken, but got back into trying his own musical career. He auditioned for the Monkees, unsuccessfully, but shortly after that -- some sources say even the same day as the audition, though that seems a little too neat -- he went to Ben Frank's -- the LA hangout that had actually been namechecked in the open call for Monkees auditions, which said they wanted "Ben Franks types", and there he met Arthur Lee and Johnny Echols. Echols would later remember "He was this gadfly kind of character who knew everybody and was flitting from table to table. He wore striped pants and a scarf, and he had this long, strawberry hair. All the girls loved him. For whatever reason, he came and sat at our table. Of course, Arthur and I were the only two black people there at the time." Lee and Echols were both Black musicians who had been born in Memphis. Lee's birth father, Chester Taylor, had been a cornet player with Jimmie Lunceford, whose Delta Rhythm Boys had had a hit with "The Honeydripper", as we heard way back in the episode on "Rocket '88": [Excerpt: Jimmie Lunceford and the Delta Rhythm Boys, "The Honeydripper"] However, Taylor soon split from Lee's mother, a schoolteacher, and she married Clinton Lee, a stonemason, who doted on his adopted son, and they moved to California. They lived in a relatively prosperous area of LA, a neighbourhood that was almost all white, with a few Asian families, though the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson lived nearby. A year or so after Arthur and his mother moved to LA, so did the Echols family, who had known them in Memphis, and they happened to move only a couple of streets away. Eight year old Arthur Lee reconnected with seven-year-old Johnny Echols, and the two became close friends from that point on. Arthur Lee first started out playing music when his parents were talked into buying him an accordion by a salesman who would go around with a donkey, give kids free donkey rides, and give the parents a sales pitch while they were riding the donkey, He soon gave up on the accordion and persuaded his parents to buy him an organ instead -- he was a spoiled child, by all accounts, with a TV in his bedroom, which was almost unheard of in the late fifties. Johnny Echols had a similar experience which led to his parents buying him a guitar, and the two were growing up in a musical environment generally. They attended Dorsey High School at the same time as both Billy Preston and Mike Love of the Beach Boys, and Ella Fitzgerald and her then-husband, the great jazz bass player Ray Brown, lived in the same apartment building as the Echols family for a while. Ornette Coleman, the free-jazz saxophone player, lived next door to Echols, and Adolphus Jacobs, the guitarist with the Coasters, gave him guitar lessons. Arthur Lee also knew Johnny Otis, who ran a pigeon-breeding club for local children which Arthur would attend. Echols was the one who first suggested that he and Arthur should form a band, and they put together a group to play at a school talent show, performing "Last Night", the instrumental that had been a hit for the Mar-Keys on Stax records: [Excerpt: The Mar-Keys, "Last Night"] They soon became a regular group, naming themselves Arthur Lee and the LAGs -- the LA Group, in imitation of Booker T and the MGs – the Memphis Group. At some point around this time, Lee decided to switch from playing organ to playing guitar. He would say later that this was inspired by seeing Johnny "Guitar" Watson get out of a gold Cadillac, wearing a gold suit, and with gold teeth in his mouth. The LAGs started playing as support acts and backing bands for any blues and soul acts that came through LA, performing with Big Mama Thornton, Johnny Otis, the O'Jays, and more. Arthur and Johnny were both still under-age, and they would pencil in fake moustaches to play the clubs so they'd appear older. In the fifties and early sixties, there were a number of great electric guitar players playing blues on the West Coast -- Johnny "Guitar" Watson, T-Bone Walker, Guitar Slim, and others -- and they would compete with each other not only to play well, but to put on a show, and so there was a whole bag of stage tricks that West Coast R&B guitarists picked up, and Echols learned all of them -- playing his guitar behind his back, playing his guitar with his teeth, playing with his guitar between his legs. As well as playing their own shows, the LAGs also played gigs under other names -- they had a corrupt agent who would book them under the name of whatever Black group had a hit at the time, in the belief that almost nobody knew what popular groups looked like anyway, so they would go out and perform as the Drifters or the Coasters or half a dozen other bands. But Arthur Lee in particular wanted to have success in his own right. He would later say "When I was a little boy I would listen to Nat 'King' Cole and I would look at that purple Capitol Records logo. I wanted to be on Capitol, that was my goal. Later on I used to walk from Dorsey High School all the way up to the Capitol building in Hollywood -- did that many times. I was determined to get a record deal with Capitol, and I did, without the help of a fancy manager or anyone else. I talked to Adam Ross and Jack Levy at Ardmore-Beechwood. I talked to Kim Fowley, and then I talked to Capitol". The record that the LAGs released, though, was not very good, a track called "Rumble-Still-Skins": [Excerpt: The LAGs, "Rumble-Still-Skins"] Lee later said "I was young and very inexperienced and I was testing the record company. I figured if I gave them my worst stuff and they ripped me off I wouldn't get hurt. But it didn't work, and after that I started giving my best, and I've been doing that ever since." The LAGs were dropped by Capitol after one single, and for the next little while Arthur and Johnny did work for smaller labels, usually labels owned by Bob Keane, with Arthur writing and producing and Johnny playing guitar -- though Echols has said more recently that a lot of the songs that were credited to Arthur as sole writer were actually joint compositions. Most of these records were attempts at copying the style of other people. There was "I Been Trying", a Phil Spector soundalike released by Little Ray: [Excerpt: Little Ray, "I Been Trying"] And there were a few attempts at sounding like Curtis Mayfield, like "Slow Jerk" by Ronnie and the Pomona Casuals: [Excerpt: Ronnie and the Pomona Casuals, "Slow Jerk"] and "My Diary" by Rosa Lee Brooks: [Excerpt: Rosa Lee Brooks, "My Diary"] Echols was also playing with a lot of other people, and one of the musicians he was playing with, his old school friend Billy Preston, told him about a recent European tour he'd been on with Little Richard, and the band from Liverpool he'd befriended while he was there who idolised Richard, so when the Beatles hit America, Arthur and Johnny had some small amount of context for them. They soon broke up the LAGs and formed another group, the American Four, with two white musicians, bass player John Fleckenstein and drummer Don Costa. Lee had them wear wigs so they seemed like they had longer hair, and started dressing more eccentrically -- he would soon become known for wearing glasses with one blue lens and one red one, and, as he put it "wearing forty pounds of beads, two coats, three shirts, and wearing two pairs of shoes on one foot". As well as the Beatles, the American Four were inspired by the other British Invasion bands -- Arthur was in the audience for the TAMI show, and quite impressed by Mick Jagger -- and also by the Valentinos, Bobby Womack's group. They tried to get signed to SAR Records, the label owned by Sam Cooke for which the Valentinos recorded, but SAR weren't interested, and they ended up recording for Bob Keane's Del-Fi records, where they cut "Luci Baines", a "Twist and Shout" knock-off with lyrics referencing the daughter of new US President Lyndon Johnson: [Excerpt: The American Four, "Luci Baines"] But that didn't take off any more than the earlier records had. Another American Four track, "Stay Away", was recorded but went unreleased until 2006: [Excerpt: Arthur Lee and the American Four, "Stay Away"] Soon the American Four were changing their sound and name again. This time it was because of two bands who were becoming successful on the Sunset Strip. One was the Byrds, who to Lee's mind were making music like the stuff he heard in his head, and the other was their rivals the Rising Sons, the blues band we mentioned earlier with Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder. Lee was very impressed by them as an multiracial band making aggressive, loud, guitar music, though he would always make the point when talking about them that they were a blues band, not a rock band, and *he* had the first multiracial rock band. Whatever they were like live though, in their recordings, produced by the Byrds' first producer Terry Melcher, the Rising Sons often had the same garage band folk-punk sound that Lee and Echols would soon make their own: [Excerpt: The Rising Sons, "Take a Giant Step"] But while the Rising Sons recorded a full album's worth of material, only one single was released before they split up, and so the way was clear for Lee and Echols' band, now renamed once again to The Grass Roots, to become the Byrds' new challengers. Lee later said "I named the group The Grass Roots behind a trip, or an album I heard that Malcolm X did, where he said 'the grass roots of the people are out in the street doing something about their problems instead of sitting around talking about it'". After seeing the Rolling Stones and the Byrds live, Lee wanted to get up front and move like Mick Jagger, and not be hindered by playing a guitar he wasn't especially good at -- both the Stones and the Byrds had two guitarists and a frontman who just sang and played hand percussion, and these were the models that Lee was following for the group. He also thought it would be a good idea commercially to get a good-looking white boy up front. So the group got in another guitarist, a white pretty boy who Lee soon fell out with and gave the nickname "Bummer Bob" because he was unpleasant to be around. Those of you who know exactly why Bobby Beausoleil later became famous will probably agree that this was a more than reasonable nickname to give him (and those of you who don't, I'll be dealing with him when we get to 1969). So when Bryan MacLean introduced himself to Lee and Echols, and they found out that not only was he also a good-looking white guitarist, but he was also friends with the entire circle of hipsters who'd been going to Byrds gigs, people like Vito and Franzoni, and he could get a massive crowd of them to come along to gigs for any band he was in and make them the talk of the Sunset Strip scene, he was soon in the Grass Roots, and Bummer Bob was out. The Grass Roots soon had to change their name again, though. In 1965, Jan and Dean recorded their "Folk and Roll" album, which featured "The Universal Coward"... Which I am not going to excerpt again. I only put that pause in to terrify Tilt, who edits these podcasts, and has very strong opinions about that song. But P. F. Sloan and Steve Barri, the songwriters who also performed as the Fantastic Baggies, had come up with a song for that album called "Where Where You When I Needed You?": [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "Where Were You When I Needed You?"] Sloan and Barri decided to cut their own version of that song under a fake band name, and then put together a group of other musicians to tour as that band. They just needed a name, and Lou Adler, the head of Dunhill Records, suggested they call themselves The Grass Roots, and so that's what they did: [Excerpt: The Grass Roots, "Where Were You When I Needed You?"] Echols would later claim that this was deliberate malice on Adler's part -- that Adler had come in to a Grass Roots show drunk, and pretended to be interested in signing them to a contract, mostly to show off to a woman he'd brought with him. Echols and MacLean had spoken to him, not known who he was, and he'd felt disrespected, and Echols claims that he suggested the name to get back at them, and also to capitalise on their local success. The new Grass Roots soon started having hits, and so the old band had to find another name, which they got as a joking reference to a day job Lee had had at one point -- he'd apparently worked in a specialist bra shop, Luv Brassieres, which the rest of the band found hilarious. The Grass Roots became Love. While Arthur Lee was the group's lead singer, Bryan MacLean would often sing harmonies, and would get a song or two to sing live himself. And very early in the group's career, when they were playing a club called Bido Lito's, he started making his big lead spot a version of "Hey Joe", which he'd learned from his old friend David Crosby, and which soon became the highlight of the group's set. Their version was sped up, and included the riff which the Searchers had popularised in their cover version of "Needles and Pins", the song originally recorded by MacLean's old girlfriend Jackie DeShannon: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Needles and Pins"] That riff is a very simple one to play, and variants of it became very, very, common among the LA bands, most notably on the Byrds' "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better"] The riff was so ubiquitous in the LA scene that in the late eighties Frank Zappa would still cite it as one of his main memories of the scene. I'm going to quote from his autobiography, where he's talking about the differences between the LA scene he was part of and the San Francisco scene he had no time for: "The Byrds were the be-all and end-all of Los Angeles rock then. They were 'It' -- and then a group called Love was 'It.' There were a few 'psychedelic' groups that never really got to be 'It,' but they could still find work and get record deals, including the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Sky Saxon and the Seeds, and the Leaves (noted for their cover version of "Hey, Joe"). When we first went to San Francisco, in the early days of the Family Dog, it seemed that everybody was wearing the same costume, a mixture of Barbary Coast and Old West -- guys with handlebar mustaches, girls in big bustle dresses with feathers in their hair, etc. By contrast, the L.A. costumery was more random and outlandish. Musically, the northern bands had a little more country style. In L.A., it was folk-rock to death. Everything had that" [and here Zappa uses the adjectival form of a four-letter word beginning with 'f' that the main podcast providers don't like you saying on non-adult-rated shows] "D chord down at the bottom of the neck where you wiggle your finger around -- like 'Needles and Pins.'" The reason Zappa describes it that way, and the reason it became so popular, is that if you play that riff in D, the chords are D, Dsus2, and Dsus4 which means you literally only wiggle one finger on your left hand: [demonstrates] And so you get that on just a ton of records from that period, though Love, the Byrds, and the Searchers all actually play the riff on A rather than D: [demonstrates] So that riff became the Big Thing in LA after the Byrds popularised the Searchers sound there, and Love added it to their arrangement of "Hey Joe". In January 1966, the group would record their arrangement of it for their first album, which would come out in March: [Excerpt: Love, "Hey Joe"] But that wouldn't be the first recording of the song, or of Love's arrangement of it – although other than the Byrds' version, it would be the only one to come out of LA with the original Billy Roberts lyrics. Love's performances of the song at Bido Lito's had become the talk of the Sunset Strip scene, and soon every band worth its salt was copying it, and it became one of those songs like "Louie Louie" before it that everyone would play. The first record ever made with the "Hey Joe" melody actually had totally different lyrics. Kim Fowley had the idea of writing a sequel to "Hey Joe", titled "Wanted Dead or Alive", about what happened after Joe shot his woman and went off. He produced the track for The Rogues, a group consisting of Michael Lloyd and Shaun Harris, who later went on to form the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, and Lloyd and Harris were the credited writers: [Excerpt: The Rogues, "Wanted Dead or Alive"] The next version of the song to come out was the first by anyone to be released as "Hey Joe", or at least as "Hey Joe, Where You Gonna Go?", which was how it was titled on its initial release. This was by a band called The Leaves, who were friends of Love, and had picked up on "Hey Joe", and was produced by Nik Venet. It was also the first to have the now-familiar opening line "Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand?": [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Hey Joe Where You Gonna Go?"] Roberts' original lyric, as sung by both Love and the Byrds, had been "where you going with that money in your hand?", and had Joe headed off to *buy* the gun. But as Echols later said “What happened was Bob Lee from The Leaves, who were friends of ours, asked me for the words to 'Hey Joe'. I told him I would have the words the next day. I decided to write totally different lyrics. The words you hear on their record are ones I wrote as a joke. The original words to Hey Joe are ‘Hey Joe, where you going with that money in your hand? Well I'm going downtown to buy me a blue steel .44. When I catch up with that woman, she won't be running round no more.' It never says ‘Hey Joe where you goin' with that gun in your hand.' Those were the words I wrote just because I knew they were going to try and cover the song before we released it. That was kind of a dirty trick that I played on The Leaves, which turned out to be the words that everybody uses.” That first release by the Leaves also contained an extra verse -- a nod to Love's previous name: [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Hey Joe Where You Gonna Go?"] That original recording credited the song as public domain -- apparently Bryan MacLean had refused to tell the Leaves who had written the song, and so they assumed it was traditional. It came out in November 1965, but only as a promo single. Even before the Leaves, though, another band had recorded "Hey Joe", but it didn't get released. The Sons of Adam had started out as a surf group called the Fender IV, who made records like "Malibu Run": [Excerpt: The Fender IV, "Malibu Run"] Kim Fowley had suggested they change their name to the Sons of Adam, and they were another group who were friends with Love -- their drummer, Michael Stuart-Ware, would later go on to join Love, and Arthur Lee wrote the song "Feathered Fish" for them: [Excerpt: Sons of Adam, "Feathered Fish"] But while they were the first to record "Hey Joe", their version has still to this day not been released. Their version was recorded for Decca, with producer Gary Usher, but before it was released, another Decca artist also recorded the song, and the label weren't sure which one to release. And then the label decided to press Usher to record a version with yet another act -- this time with the Surfaris, the surf group who had had a hit with "Wipe Out". Coincidentally, the Surfaris had just changed bass players -- their most recent bass player, Ken Forssi, had quit and joined Love, whose own bass player, John Fleckenstein, had gone off to join the Standells, who would also record a version of “Hey Joe” in 1966. Usher thought that the Sons of Adam were much better musicians than the Surfaris, who he was recording with more or less under protest, but their version, using Love's arrangement and the "gun in your hand" lyrics, became the first version to come out on a major label: [Excerpt: The Surfaris, "Hey Joe"] They believed the song was in the public domain, and so the songwriting credits on the record are split between Gary Usher, a W. Hale who nobody has been able to identify, and Tony Cost, a pseudonym for Nik Venet. Usher said later "I got writer's credit on it because I was told, or I assumed at the time, the song was Public Domain; meaning a non-copyrighted song. It had already been cut two or three times, and on each occasion the writing credit had been different. On a traditional song, whoever arranges it, takes the songwriting credit. I may have changed a few words and arranged and produced it, but I certainly did not co-write it." The public domain credit also appeared on the Leaves' second attempt to cut the song, which was actually given a general release, but flopped. But when the Leaves cut the song for a *third* time, still for the same tiny label, Mira, the track became a hit in May 1966, reaching number thirty-one: [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Hey Joe"] And *that* version had what they thought was the correct songwriting credit, to Dino Valenti. Which came as news to Billy Roberts, who had registered the copyright to the song back in 1962 and had no idea that it had become a staple of LA garage rock until he heard his song in the top forty with someone else's name on the credits. He angrily confronted Third Story Music, who agreed to a compromise -- they would stop giving Valenti songwriting royalties and start giving them to Roberts instead, so long as he didn't sue them and let them keep the publishing rights. Roberts was indignant about this -- he deserved all the money, not just half of it -- but he went along with it to avoid a lawsuit he might not win. So Roberts was now the credited songwriter on the versions coming out of the LA scene. But of course, Dino Valenti had been playing "his" song to other people, too. One of those other people was Vince Martin. Martin had been a member of a folk-pop group called the Tarriers, whose members also included the future film star Alan Arkin, and who had had a hit in the 1950s with "Cindy, Oh Cindy": [Excerpt: The Tarriers, "Cindy, Oh Cindy"] But as we heard in the episode on the Lovin' Spoonful, he had become a Greenwich Village folkie, in a duo with Fred Neil, and recorded an album with him, "Tear Down the Walls": [Excerpt: Fred Neil and Vince Martin, "Morning Dew"] That song we just heard, "Morning Dew", was another question-and-answer folk song. It was written by the Canadian folk-singer Bonnie Dobson, but after Martin and Neil recorded it, it was picked up on by Martin's friend Tim Rose who stuck his own name on the credits as well, without Dobson's permission, for a version which made the song into a rock standard for which he continued to collect royalties: [Excerpt: Tim Rose, "Morning Dew"] This was something that Rose seems to have made a habit of doing, though to be fair to him it went both ways. We heard about him in the Lovin' Spoonful episode too, when he was in a band named the Big Three with Cass Elliot and her coincidentally-named future husband Jim Hendricks, who recorded this song, with Rose putting new music to the lyrics of the old public domain song "Oh! Susanna": [Excerpt: The Big Three, "The Banjo Song"] The band Shocking Blue used that melody for their 1969 number-one hit "Venus", and didn't give Rose any credit: [Excerpt: Shocking Blue, "Venus"] But another song that Rose picked up from Vince Martin was "Hey Joe". Martin had picked the song up from Valenti, but didn't know who had written it, or who was claiming to have written it, and told Rose he thought it might be an old Appalchian murder ballad or something. Rose took the song and claimed writing credit in his own name -- he would always, for the rest of his life, claim it was an old folk tune he'd heard in Florida, and that he'd rewritten it substantially himself, but no evidence of the song has ever shown up from prior to Roberts' copyright registration, and Rose's version is basically identical to Roberts' in melody and lyrics. But Rose takes his version at a much slower pace, and his version would be the model for the most successful versions going forward, though those other versions would use the lyrics Johnny Echols had rewritten, rather than the ones Rose used: [Excerpt: Tim Rose, "Hey Joe"] Rose's version got heard across the Atlantic as well. And in particular it was heard by Chas Chandler, the bass player of the Animals. Some sources seem to suggest that Chandler first heard the song performed by a group called the Creation, but in a biography I've read of that group they clearly state that they didn't start playing the song until 1967. But however he came across it, when Chandler heard Rose's recording, he knew that the song could be a big hit for someone, but he didn't know who. And then he bumped into Linda Keith, Keith Richards' girlfriend, who took him to see someone whose guitar we've already heard in this episode: [Excerpt: Rosa Lee Brooks, "My Diary"] The Curtis Mayfield impression on guitar there was, at least according to many sources the first recording session ever played on by a guitarist then calling himself Maurice (or possibly Mo-rees) James. We'll see later in the story that it possibly wasn't his first -- there are conflicting accounts, as there are about a lot of things, and it was recorded either in very early 1964, in which case it was his first, or (as seems more likely, and as I tell the story later) a year later, in which case he'd played on maybe half a dozen tracks in the studio by that point. But it was still a very early one. And by late 1966 that guitarist had reverted to the name by which he was brought up, and was calling himself Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix and Arthur Lee had become close, and Lee would later claim that Hendrix had copied much of Lee's dress style and attitude -- though many of Hendrix's other colleagues and employers, including Little Richard, would make similar claims -- and most of them had an element of truth, as Lee's did. Hendrix was a sponge. But Lee did influence him. Indeed, one of Hendrix's *last* sessions, in March 1970, was guesting on an album by Love: [Excerpt: Love with Jimi Hendrix, "Everlasting First"] Hendrix's name at birth was Johnny Allen Hendrix, which made his father, James Allen Hendrix, known as Al, who was away at war when his son was born, worry that he'd been named after another man who might possibly be the real father, so the family just referred to the child as "Buster" to avoid the issue. When Al Hendrix came back from the war the child was renamed James Marshall Hendrix -- James after Al's first name, Marshall after Al's dead brother -- though the family continued calling him "Buster". Little James Hendrix Junior didn't have anything like a stable home life. Both his parents were alcoholics, and Al Hendrix was frequently convinced that Jimi's mother Lucille was having affairs and became abusive about it. They had six children, four of whom were born disabled, and Jimi was the only one to remain with his parents -- the rest were either fostered or adopted at birth, fostered later on because the parents weren't providing a decent home life, or in one case made a ward of state because the Hendrixes couldn't afford to pay for a life-saving operation for him. The only one that Jimi had any kind of regular contact with was the second brother, Leon, his parents' favourite, who stayed with them for several years before being fostered by a family only a few blocks away. Al and Lucille Hendrix frequently split and reconciled, and while they were ostensibly raising Jimi (and for a few years Leon), he was shuttled between them and various family members and friends, living sometimes in Seattle where his parents lived and sometimes in Vancouver with his paternal grandmother. He was frequently malnourished, and often survived because friends' families fed him. Al Hendrix was also often physically and emotionally abusive of the son he wasn't sure was his. Jimi grew up introverted, and stuttering, and only a couple of things seemed to bring him out of his shell. One was science fiction -- he always thought that his nickname, Buster, came from Buster Crabbe, the star of the Flash Gordon serials he loved to watch, though in fact he got the nickname even before that interest developed, and he was fascinated with ideas about aliens and UFOs -- and the other was music. Growing up in Seattle in the forties and fifties, most of the music he was exposed to as a child and in his early teens was music made by and for white people -- there wasn't a very large Black community in the area at the time compared to most major American cities, and so there were no prominent R&B stations. As a kid he loved the music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, and when he was thirteen Jimi's favourite record was Dean Martin's "Memories are Made of This": [Excerpt: Dean Martin, "Memories are Made of This"] He also, like every teenager, became a fan of rock and roll music. When Elvis played at a local stadium when Jimi was fifteen, he couldn't afford a ticket, but he went and sat on top of a nearby hill and watched the show from the distance. Jimi's first exposure to the blues also came around this time, when his father briefly took in lodgers, Cornell and Ernestine Benson, and Ernestine had a record collection that included records by Lightnin' Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf, and Muddy Waters, all of whom Jimi became a big fan of, especially Muddy Waters. The Bensons' most vivid memory of Jimi in later years was him picking up a broom and pretending to play guitar along with these records: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Baby Please Don't Go"] Shortly after this, it would be Ernestine Benson who would get Jimi his very first guitar. By this time Jimi and Al had lost their home and moved into a boarding house, and the owner's son had an acoustic guitar with only one string that he was planning to throw out. When Jimi asked if he could have it instead of it being thrown out, the owner told him he could have it for five dollars. Al Hendrix refused to pay that much for it, but Ernestine Benson bought Jimi the guitar. She said later “He only had one string, but he could really make that string talk.” He started carrying the guitar on his back everywhere he went, in imitation of Sterling Hayden in the western Johnny Guitar, and eventually got some more strings for it and learned to play. He would play it left-handed -- until his father came in. His father had forced him to write with his right hand, and was convinced that left-handedness was the work of the devil, so Jimi would play left-handed while his father was somewhere else, but as soon as Al came in he would flip the guitar the other way up and continue playing the song he had been playing, now right-handed. Jimi's mother died when he was fifteen, after having been ill for a long time with drink-related problems, and Jimi and his brother didn't get to go to the funeral -- depending on who you believe, either Al gave Jimi the bus fare and told him to go by himself and Jimi was too embarrassed to go to the funeral alone on the bus, or Al actually forbade Jimi and Leon from going. After this, he became even more introverted than he was before, and he also developed a fascination with the idea of angels, convinced his mother now was one. Jimi started to hang around with a friend called Pernell Alexander, who also had a guitar, and they would play along together with Elmore James records. The two also went to see Little Richard and Bill Doggett perform live, and while Jimi was hugely introverted, he did start to build more friendships in the small Seattle music scene, including with Ron Holden, the man we talked about in the episode on "Louie Louie" who introduced that song to Seattle, and who would go on to record with Bruce Johnston for Bob Keane: [Excerpt: Ron Holden, "Gee But I'm Lonesome"] Eventually Ernestine Benson persuaded Al Hendrix to buy Jimi a decent electric guitar on credit -- Al also bought himself a saxophone at the same time, thinking he might play music with his son, but sent it back once the next payment became due. As well as blues and R&B, Jimi was soaking up the guitar instrumentals and garage rock that would soon turn into surf music. The first song he learned to play was "Tall Cool One" by the Fabulous Wailers, the local group who popularised a version of "Louie Louie" based on Holden's one: [Excerpt: The Fabulous Wailers, "Tall Cool One"] As we talked about in the "Louie Louie" episode, the Fabulous Wailers used to play at a venue called the Spanish Castle, and Jimi was a regular in the audience, later writing his song "Spanish Castle Magic" about those shows: [Excerpt: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Spanish Castle Magic"] He was also a big fan of Duane Eddy, and soon learned Eddy's big hits "Forty Miles of Bad Road", "Because They're Young", and "Peter Gunn" -- a song he would return to much later in his life: [Excerpt: Jimi Hendrix, "Peter Gunn/Catastrophe"] His career as a guitarist didn't get off to a great start -- the first night he played with his first band, he was meant to play two sets, but he was fired after the first set, because he was playing in too flashy a manner and showing off too much on stage. His girlfriend suggested that he might want to tone it down a little, but he said "That's not my style". This would be a common story for the next several years. After that false start, the first real band he was in was the Velvetones, with his friend Pernell Alexander. There were four guitarists, two piano players, horns and drums, and they dressed up with glitter stuck to their pants. They played Duane Eddy songs, old jazz numbers, and "Honky Tonk" by Bill Doggett, which became Hendrix's signature song with the band. [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk"] His father was unsupportive of his music career, and he left his guitar at Alexander's house because he was scared that his dad would smash it if he took it home. At the same time he was with the Velvetones, he was also playing with another band called the Rocking Kings, who got gigs around the Seattle area, including at the Spanish Castle. But as they left school, most of Hendrix's friends were joining the Army, in order to make a steady living, and so did he -- although not entirely by choice. He was arrested, twice, for riding in stolen cars, and he was given a choice -- either go to prison, or sign up for the Army for three years. He chose the latter. At first, the Army seemed to suit him. He was accepted into the 101st Airborne Division, the famous "Screaming Eagles", whose actions at D-Day made them legendary in the US, and he was proud to be a member of the Division. They were based out of Fort Campbell, the base near Clarksville we talked about a couple of episodes ago, and while he was there he met a bass player, Billy Cox, who he started playing with. As Cox and Hendrix were Black, and as Fort Campbell straddled the border between Kentucky and Tennessee, they had to deal with segregation and play to only Black audiences. And Hendrix quickly discovered that Black audiences in the Southern states weren't interested in "Louie Louie", Duane Eddy, and surf music, the stuff he'd been playing in Seattle. He had to instead switch to playing Albert King and Slim Harpo songs, but luckily he loved that music too. He also started singing at this point -- when Hendrix and Cox started playing together, in a trio called the Kasuals, they had no singer, and while Hendrix never liked his own voice, Cox was worse, and so Hendrix was stuck as the singer. The Kasuals started gigging around Clarksville, and occasionally further afield, places like Nashville, where Arthur Alexander would occasionally sit in with them. But Cox was about to leave the Army, and Hendrix had another two and a bit years to go, having enlisted for three years. They couldn't play any further away unless Hendrix got out of the Army, which he was increasingly unhappy in anyway, and so he did the only thing he could -- he pretended to be gay, and got discharged on medical grounds for homosexuality. In later years he would always pretend he'd broken his ankle parachuting from a plane. For the next few years, he would be a full-time guitarist, and spend the periods when he wasn't earning enough money from that leeching off women he lived with, moving from one to another as they got sick of him or ran out of money. The Kasuals expanded their lineup, adding a second guitarist, Alphonso Young, who would show off on stage by playing guitar with his teeth. Hendrix didn't like being upstaged by another guitarist, and quickly learned to do the same. One biography I've used as a source for this says that at this point, Billy Cox played on a session for King Records, for Frank Howard and the Commanders, and brought Hendrix along, but the producer thought that Hendrix's guitar was too frantic and turned his mic off. But other sources say the session Hendrix and Cox played on for the Commanders wasn't until three years later, and the record *sounds* like a 1965 record, not a 1962 one, and his guitar is very audible – and the record isn't on King. But we've not had any music to break up the narration for a little while, and it's a good track (which later became a Northern Soul favourite) so I'll play a section here, as either way it was certainly an early Hendrix session: [Excerpt: Frank Howard and the Commanders, "I'm So Glad"] This illustrates a general problem with Hendrix's life at this point -- he would flit between bands, playing with the same people at multiple points, nobody was taking detailed notes, and later, once he became famous, everyone wanted to exaggerate their own importance in his life, meaning that while the broad outlines of his life are fairly clear, any detail before late 1966 might be hopelessly wrong. But all the time, Hendrix was learning his craft. One story from around this time sums up both Hendrix's attitude to his playing -- he saw himself almost as much as a scientist as a musician -- and his slightly formal manner of speech. He challenged the best blues guitarist in Nashville to a guitar duel, and the audience actually laughed at Hendrix's playing, as he was totally outclassed. When asked what he was doing, he replied “I was simply trying to get that B.B. King tone down and my experiment failed.” Bookings for the King Kasuals dried up, and he went to Vancouver, where he spent a couple of months playing in a covers band, Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers, whose lead guitarist was Tommy Chong, later to find fame as one half of Cheech and Chong. But he got depressed at how white Vancouver was, and travelled back down south to join a reconfigured King Kasuals, who now had a horn section. The new lineup of King Kasuals were playing the chitlin circuit and had to put on a proper show, and so Hendrix started using all the techniques he'd seen other guitarists on the circuit use -- playing with his teeth like Alphonso Young, the other guitarist in the band, playing with his guitar behind his back like T-Bone Walker, and playing with a fifty-foot cord that allowed him to walk into the crowd and out of the venue, still playing, like Guitar Slim used to. As well as playing with the King Kasuals, he started playing the circuit as a sideman. He got short stints with many of the second-tier acts on the circuit -- people who had had one or two hits, or were crowd-pleasers, but weren't massive stars, like Carla Thomas or Jerry Butler or Slim Harpo. The first really big name he played with was Solomon Burke, who when Hendrix joined his band had just released "Just Out of Reach (Of My Two Empty Arms)": [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Just Out of Reach (Of My Two Empty Arms)"] But he lacked discipline. “Five dates would go beautifully,” Burke later said, “and then at the next show, he'd go into this wild stuff that wasn't part of the song. I just couldn't handle it anymore.” Burke traded him to Otis Redding, who was on the same tour, for two horn players, but then Redding fired him a week later and they left him on the side of the road. He played in the backing band for the Marvelettes, on a tour with Curtis Mayfield, who would be another of Hendrix's biggest influences, but he accidentally blew up Mayfield's amp and got sacked. On another tour, Cecil Womack threw Hendrix's guitar off the bus while he slept. In February 1964 he joined the band of the Isley Brothers, and he would watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan with them during his first days with the group. Assuming he hadn't already played the Rosa Lee Brooks session (and I think there's good reason to believe he hadn't), then the first record Hendrix played on was their single "Testify": [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Testify"] While he was with them, he also moonlighted on Don Covay's big hit "Mercy, Mercy": [Excerpt: Don Covay and the Goodtimers, "Mercy Mercy"] After leaving the Isleys, Hendrix joined the minor soul singer Gorgeous George, and on a break from Gorgeous George's tour, in Memphis, he went to Stax studios in the hope of meeting Steve Cropper, one of his idols. When he was told that Cropper was busy in the studio, he waited around all day until Cropper finished, and introduced himself. Hendrix was amazed to discover that Cropper was white -- he'd assumed that he must be Black -- and Cropper was delighted to meet the guitarist who had played on "Mercy Mercy", one of his favourite records. The two spent hours showing each other guitar licks -- Hendrix playing Cropper's right-handed guitar, as he hadn't brought along his own. Shortly after this, he joined Little Richard's band, and once again came into conflict with the star of the show by trying to upstage him. For one show he wore a satin shirt, and after the show Richard screamed at him “I am the only Little Richard! I am the King of Rock and Roll, and I am the only one allowed to be pretty. Take that shirt off!” While he was with Richard, Hendrix played on his "I Don't Know What You've Got, But It's Got Me", which like "Mercy Mercy" was written by Don Covay, who had started out as Richard's chauffeur: [Excerpt: Little Richard, "I Don't Know What You've Got, But It's Got Me"] According to the most likely version of events I've read, it was while he was working for Richard that Hendrix met Rosa Lee Brooks, on New Year's Eve 1964. At this point he was using the name Maurice James, apparently in tribute to the blues guitarist Elmore James, and he used various names, including Jimmy James, for most of his pre-fame performances. Rosa Lee Brooks was an R&B singer who had been mentored by Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and when she met Hendrix she was singing in a girl group who were one of the support acts for Ike & Tina Turner, who Hendrix went to see on his night off. Hendrix met Brooks afterwards, and told her she looked like his mother -- a line he used on a lot of women, but which was true in her case if photos are anything to go by. The two got into a relationship, and were soon talking about becoming a duo like Ike and Tina or Mickey and Sylvia -- "Love is Strange" was one of Hendrix's favourite records. But the only recording they made together was the "My Diary" single. Brooks always claimed that she actually wrote that song, but the label credit is for Arthur Lee, and it sounds like his work to me, albeit him trying hard to write like Curtis Mayfield, just as Hendrix is trying to play like him: [Excerpt: Rosa Lee Brooks, "My Diary"] Brooks and Hendrix had a very intense relationship for a short period. Brooks would later recall Little
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